GAMES we played at SCHOOL

[tree]

If you went to school, ages 5 through 11,
what games do you remember playing?

Alone, with other kids, voluntarily or
at the direction of the teacher?
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[tree]

Here is one game that stands out in my memory.
"Bunny, Bunny, How's Your Neighbor?"

We had to play this in kdg. It was the teacher's
idea. She picked a kid to be first. First kid has
to hop to another kid's desk and say:
"Bunny, Bunny, How's Your Neighbor?"
(Holding your hands like paws in front of you)

Seated kid says, "I don't know, but I'll go see."
You get to sit in that kid's chair and he/she has
to hop off and ask the pivotal question of some
other kid.

The game was over whenever the teacher decided
it was. The stopping point was when everybody was
was in a seat other than his own. Whee.

This was tolerable at age 5, if nothing else was
possible. Like, too much rain or snow to go out
for recess.

At age 11, however, it truly failed to amuse. We
actually did play "Bunny, Bunny, How's Your Neighbor?"
during one 6th grade party. The teacher asked for
suggestions and Ben requested "Bunny, Bunny." There
weren't any groans. Most of us had spent 5 years in
class with Ben. We knew this really was his speed.
It wasn't an issue of 'mainstreaming.' There weren't
any special ed classes at our school.

So we played the game.

 

[Myway]

I didn't play any games. I preferred being alone, reading or writing were what I did.

 

[watersprite]

Dodgeball, 4-square, & tag.

 

[tree]

Dodgeball, 4-square, & tag.

I have read that the way girls play 4-square, as far as making a player out,
tends to be social. A girl typically announces to a friend in line that she will
get her "in." Getting her "in" involves sending another girl "out" but girls
don't interpret the "out" as an aggressive or competitive move because it
is done to accommodate a friend.

 

[wyverary]

Hide and Go Seek was a perennial favorite of mine, and I've pondered starting up a Hide-and-Go-Seek league à la Portlandia.

 

[watersprite]

wyverary mentioning hide and seek reminded me that in summer a very large group of boys and girls played capture the flag in the evenings after dinner.

I have absolutley no recollection of any pecking order in the game of 4-square, but I may have simply not noticed.

 

[watersprite]

Hide and Go Seek was a perennial favorite of mine, and I've pondered starting up a Hide-and-Go-Seek league à la Portlandia.

What does a la Portlandia mean? I'd think a lot of people would love to play - Portland and Vancouver area?

 

[wyverary]

What does a la Portlandia mean? I'd think a lot of people would love to play - Portland and Vancouver area?

Portlandia is a comedy sketch series, with Fred Armisen (of Saturday Night Live fame) and Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney fame, one of my all-time favorite bands) that takes place in Portland and pokes gentle fun at Portland culture. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1780441/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

[AsheSkyler]

Dodgeball, but rarely. We had kickball, which is like baseball except you kick the ball. On the playground to do as we wished, we had "Walker Texas Ranger", which was supposed to be a bunch of cowboys combating outlaws, but ended up mostly with the "good guys" swaggering around and pretending to whip out pistols at each other while the "bad guys" flirted it up with the damsels in "distress" being held "hostage".

My favorite was the parachute in gym class! This giant, rainbow-colored parachute where we all grabbed an edge and then just shook it as hard we could. Sometimes the teacher would throw a ball into it and divide us into teams so we could try to get the ball over the other teams' head. Or raise it up really high, get inside right quick, and pretend we were in a mushroom.

My least favorite in school was Duck, Duck, Goose. You put 30+ kids in a circle of one or more classes and all you're gonna get is 25+ bored kids because the same geese will tag each other over and over when not delighting in getting to hit the whole class in the head as hard as they please.

Outside of school we played the usual tag, freeze tag, hide and seek, and red rover.

 

[tree]

AsheSkyler
geh---Duck, Duck, Goose.....

Less fun than Duck, Duck, Goose was "Bluebird Bluebird Through My Window."

I don't remember that ever being a game we played unless a grown-up said we had to do it.
Form a circle and weave in and out under people's arms, while everybody had to sing...
Bluebird Bluebird Through My Window.

Like this:

 

[Flinty]

Wow. Just watching that was negative-fun.

We had a softball variant that was designed to be played with teams of almost any size. I won't name it because it was played in a really small town. The best part was that you didn't have to be any good at swinging a bat - in fact, if you were bad enough, missing the pitch was by far the best option.

 

[AsheSkyler]

tree Oh goodness... Sooo muuuch jostling... If I'm going through arms, it's gonna be because Red Rover came right on over.

 

[Vinca]

At luch time we layed Bulldog on the school field. One person was 'on'(the bulldog), and everyone else was congregated at one end of the field and they had to try and reach the other end of the field without being caught(via being touched), by the bulldog. If the bulldog caught someone, they became a bulldog too.

I was very happy to play games that were active and involved running about, I didn't like being static.

In games lessons the girls played netball and the boys played football. I couldn't stand net ball though cuz of the stopping any time I got the ball, an fortunately I was allowed to play football with the boys.

I'm not sure that it was a proper game, but a game of sorts and lots of fun - repetatively doing handstands, to see how long we could stay up for.

Hop Scotch - Take it in tunrs to throw a pebble as close to ten as possible, then 'hop scotch' up to it.

Cats Cradle - something for two kids and that was done without direction from teachers

Conkers - Kids have a conker strung on a piece of stringor shoelace, then take it in turns to swing at another persons conker. The person whose conker breaks to pieces first, looses.

Making mud pies in the 'pockets' that were formed in the visable roots, at the base of a tree, which coleccted rain.


Building 'egg nests' from the cut grass on the playing field.

 

[Mia]

There weren't any games at the convents. Nuns would lead us on a walk up through the grounds with our hands demurely clasped behind our backs. One nun in front, and one at the very end, in case one of their charges slipped away. This was recess, and for fifteen minutes after lunch was completed.

Although there was exactly one school year in which something happened politically in the province, and catholic school children were bused to another school. It was in the US and the nuns wore sneakers at recess and we played baseball

After school and weekends and summers I played red rover, kick the can, hide and seek, who could roll down a hill the fastest, sand sliding in large appliance boxes, surfing on cardboard, and other games that I can't remember anymore.