Playground games

jsn,

In kindergarten I joined in "he" or "hide and seek".

Four years later, I joined in a skipping game called "salt and pepper." It became quicker after the fourth jump, with girls whirling two ropes.

A hopping game where the pebble had to land on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd chalk square and so on. Completely forgotten the name

At 10 I started tennis lessons. I especially enjoyed sliding toward the ball on a clay court.

Hopscotch, Luckyducky?
Skipping, marbles, the above hopscotch, oranges and lemons.

Two balls, skipping and jacks - I was really good at jacks!

Skipping with a really long length of rope, one girl at either end turning the rope and as many people as possible skipping. Everyone would chant
"All in together girls
This fine weather girls.
When I call your birthday
You are out."
Then when your birthday month came up you would have to try to run out without getting caught up in the rope.
Boys never joined in skipping games at our school.

In Glasgow where I grew up hopscotch was called "peever", the peever being the thing we kicked from space to space. I seem to remember it was a tin (like an elastoplast tin) weighted down in some way. Any other Glesca Keelies out there who remember playing it that way?

Skipping ( callings in and callings out) had to stand at side of rope until some called you in and someon to come out
Two balls up the wall
Gobs same as jacks but you had little coloured cubes

Kiss chase! Girls chasing the boys more often than the other way round. Happy days.....

Dabs, circle games, eg: 'The Farmer Wants A Wife', pass ball, plus most of the above mentioned. Also there was lots of 'dibbing'.

I'm guessing 'dibbing' was choosing who was 'it' (rather than 'he') in chaste games? We used dips. Here are a few we employed:
Dip dip dip
My blue ship
Sails on the water
Like a cup and saucer
Dip dip dip
You are not 'it' (last one was therefore 'it')

Lady, baby, gypsy, queen, elephant, monkey, tangerine!

One potato, two potato, three potato, four
Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more!
This was done going round tapping everyone's fists held out in front. If your first was 'more' you had to remove it from the round till the last fist left was 'it'. The chanter had to include their own fists too.

One of the boys, Nicholas, was hugely popular. He played kiss chase with a hareem of girls and only kissed the last one to be caught! He definitely engineered the result too! I think this game taught me (at about 7 or 8 years old) that it wasn't necessarily the prettiest girls who were liked. He usually left me till last and I was by no means the prettiest. A great confidence boost for someone with two pretty sisters!

Chasey not chaste!! Read on for proof!

Fist not first! Grr!

Ooh, lots of memories flooding back, remember all these things!

We have no GDs only GSs and many of these games in my day were girly games so I just wonder if the children of today still play these sorts of games or is it all screens nowadays?

We put a small ball in a nylon stocking and then would stand back to the wall and hit the ball against the wall
First right then left of body
Then lift each leg in turn and hit the wall.
At the same time singing a rhyme (but can't remember it!)
The rhyme and the ball hitting wall gets faster and faster

Grannyqueenie I grew up in Arbroath playing peevers we used a shoe polish tin full of gravel the shape of the board was square with a semi circle at the top

One of our skipping rhymes went like this:
Nelson lost one arm at the battle of Waterloo (arm behind back)
Nelson lost one eye at the battle of Waterloo (close one eye)
Nelson lost one leg etc (hop)
Then the other arm and eye. He never lost both legs!!!
You'd usually be out long before he got to the last remaining limb...

We moved house a few times. Some of the primary schools I went to still had boys and girls entrances and separate playgrounds. I often wondered what the boys got up to. British bulldog was one of their games. Any guys on here played that?

Does anybody remember
I wrote a letter to my love
And on the way to post it
I dropped it
somebody must have picked it up and put in their pocket

(Not sure that I've got it exactly right)

Everyone would sit in the circle
One girl would go round the back of the circle and drop the letter behind somebody. (Can't then remember what happened next)

Oh, yes marpau, we sometimes used one of my dad's pipe tobacco tins for the peever - very similar size to a shoe polish tin, with a tight fitting lid. Same kind of chalked area as you too, happy memories!

grannyqueenie....in Edinburgh the game was called peeverie beds and we used an old tin or a smooth pebble. I remember skipping with double ropes and being 'called in' by the girls turning or 'cau'in' the rope to the words;

'on the hill there lives a maiden,
who she is we do not know
All she wants is gold and silver
All she wants is a nice, young man
So call in my (insert next skipper's name)

Another rhyme I remember must have predated my childhood given the names of the film stars!

'One, two, three o'leerie
I saw Wallace Beery(?)
Sitting on his bumbaleerie
Kissing Shirley Temple!'

Not quite a Glesca Keelie - but Ayrshire is close enough and we did play peevers, sometimes with a boot polish tin filled with stones or with a piece of marble that had broken off my granny's marble slab. As not many people around us had cars, it was quite safe to draw the 'beds' on our road. We also played ball beds which involved bouncing a ball round the 'beds'.

Skipping games were popular in the playground and in the street. A length of clothes line would be secreted in a school bag and one at each end 'cawed' the rope while the others jumped. I was not very good at that game!

Wow, so many memories. It seems that the children don't play those games anymore but I really enjoyed on our breaks and after school. Occasionally you would get grazed knees but these days everyone seems too scared to let children play and wrap them up in cotton wool for fear someone will get hurt

There was a game they played at my junior school where everybody held hands in a long line then one end started spinning round so everyone was running in a circle and the end person was almost flying round
D. That was usually me as I was very small for my age. I hated it but was so shy and scared of the others I couldn't refuse! Wouldn't be allowed now thank goodness

We used to play hopscotch, French skipping, two balls, Grandfather's footsteps. Street cricket with as many friends as we could collect.