Favourite childhood pastime

I forgot scrumping apples

outside was my main thing. Playing tig, chase, hide and seek, on the beach, just anything really that got us out. Rain, snow, none of it mattered you just put on appropriate clothing.
We were also a family who loved board games, one of the advantages of a bigger family I guess. We did not fight as much when playing board games and would happily interact to play Monopoly or Cluedo or ludo.

I used to draw models/dolls, cut them out and design paper clothes to put on them with tabs. I'm pleased that there are so many others here who used to do that. I used to bash a tennis ball against the wall in the back yard for hours. It's strange that I'm so useless at tennis, despite that. I used to read for hours and draw. Playing on my scooter. (I was a bit ginger about this after I fell head over heels going down a hill and hurt myself badly). Also, racing downhill, suicidally on my roller skates. Walking over the countryside and climbing up into a tree which had a hollow where I'd sit for hours. This area is now a huge sprawling housing estate.
Listening to Pick of the Pops recorded on my Grundig tape recorder. I can still smell that huge machine and the tapes. There was a dub button where you could record your own voice and I'd do Beach Boys type harmonies. Playing the piano, of course. From the age of 12 when I got my first bike, bike rides into the countryside on a Sunday. Jacks in the cloakroom at school and Chinese skipping.

I have just seen that I should have said I can't remember how it was played
I have just thought of the lovely little sweet shops you could get with tiny bottles full of coloured sweets.
Yes it is such a shame that today's children get little experience of playing unattended outside as we did.

Reading, jigsaws, lego and more reading. Books are a huge thing in our family!

Reading, reading, paper dolls especially the ones that came in Mum's magazine once a month. Bayko mentioned by Rosina. I still have that and it fascinates my GC. Skipping, two-balls, disappearing with friends for hours on my bike, hula hoop and diabolo ( was never good at those and still can't do either as well as my GD.)

Making plaster of paris models in rubber moulds. Then painting and varnishing them. Some must have been really hideous, but were proudly given as gifts to all. When clearing out my aunts house I found a collection of them aged 40 + years,

Am very sorry to say that my favourite thing of all was when we went to north Wales to visit my grandparents - I would spend days looking for dead moles in the hedgerows so I could give them a proper burial, with hymns and everything. (Needless to say my father was a Vicar.)

Oh the memories - paper cut out dolls,Spirograph, making pom Poms, playing post office or shop with your mum. Happy days.

Reading, skipping with a long rope and lots of friends, playing rally-ho, tig, the big ship sails down the alley alley oh etc. and best of all putting on shows on the back steps of our flats - a perfect stage area.
When I was a primary school teacher I used to love playground duty because I could join in the games!
I worked in a school with lots of children who had just come over from Pakistan or Bangladesh and almost the first English the girls learnt was the words to the skipping songs.
Happy days.
My little granddaughter has learned quite a few of the old playground games like 'The Farmer Wants a Wife' at nursery.

I grew up in a street with lots of children. We had fads about what we played. In the summer it was tennis, hopscotch, jacks, rounders, bike riding, skipping, hide and seek. In the winter we hoped to be allowed in someone's house. Then we played with dolls, or swapped annuals. Such a happy carefree time!

Oh I'd forgotten the Bayko! My brother had a set and we all played with it endlessly. I loved my hula hoop too, and used to show off with it, walking round and round our square while keeping it going. Can't do it for toffee nowadays .

Outside we played Sevensies with a ball against a wall and Ocky Ocky also known as Tn Can Alley. Indoors we spent hours playing Jacks and Fives. Have just taught GD to play Jacks

Reading every time- I read anything I could get my hands on- voraciously. Luckily both my parents read a lot so there were plenty of books in the house.
I also loved dress up paper dolls & would make my own too. I enjoyed prancing round the garden as if I were on horseback ( which DID lead to riding lessons in the end) & dancing-.
I also loved spending time with my Nanny- who told great stories & Grandad who only had one leg & did a lot of gardening sitting on a stool- he made me a smaller version of it so I could 'help' him. I was an only child so was very good at amusing myself. Still am!

Loved Mallory Towers! Wasn't there a lovely swimming pool in the rocks?
Ring o' Bells mystery, those footprints in the snow gave me nightmares!

Oh my ,...went down memory lane today with all the previous posts. They certainly included most of my wartime childhood playtime games. We called playing with 2 balls against the wall 'Doublers' and sang rhyming songs to the game. Then it was indoors changing scraps with my pals and making 'sugerally water' .
It was very important not to change with a scrap that had a bent corner so much flicking was done before the exchange was complete. Happy days.

I had forgotten Bayko too. We would spend hours building houses with that. Cannot imagine they would allow those steel rods to be used by children nowadays. There is a toy museum in Warwick (I think) where they had Bayko on display. Brought the memories flooding back. After that it was the very early Lego sets, think there were only two or three colours and very basic bricks.

I had forgotten about Enid Blyton books, I loved them and have collected second hand ones for years (another thing my mother got rid of!!!), I have copies of The Faraway Tree and Secret Seven books on the shelf now for GC. It was an innocent time, I used to get on my bike, with lunch sandwich in grease proof paper, dog by my side and go off all day into the country side. We all still play Pooh Sticks with GC who will not pass a stream with out finding a suitable stick. Does any one else have to go on a Bear Hunt every time we all go out?

Playing with plasticine-the original kind,not the waxy sort!

I also played horses - both with a 'tail' made from a stick with unravelled string attached to it and cantering over 'jumps' set up in the garden, and sat astride the end of the humpback bridge at the end of the garden, with reins and stirrups - made of string ... again!

We were horses and jumped all the low hedges round the cornfields. Our uncle made us a wooden cart, so one pulled it while the other rode in it. We were cowboys with cap guns, and Robin Hood with bows and arrows made from willow sticks. Tree climbing of course. Plasticine! I still love it. We had Lego rather than Bayko, and Britains plastic figures, all now available on ebay...at a cost.

Meccano. Dolls house, making furniture from matchboxes. Paper dolls, designing our own dresses for them. In the summer spending all day with my sister playing in the big wood arriving home filthy dirty. One house we lived in had a beech wood at the bottom of the garden so we played at Robin Hood the house being the Norman castle.

indinana I had a Bayko set too! I'd forgotten about it! Wouldn't get away with all those little metal rods now - elf and safety probably, but didn't the buildings look wonderful when they were finished? I saw one last year in an auction and was tempted to bid for it, but my head ruled my heart for a change!

At school, in the playground, we used to make up dances to American television programmes like 'Gilligan's Island', 'The Beverly Hillbillies' and 'Petticoat Junction'. At home we would play school, or house and make dens, where we would sit under curtains, old sheets etc when it was bright sunshine. I also spent hours reading comics and books.

Has to be the freedom to play outside. Riding bikes, roller skating, going to the park. Was very rarely in.