Strange and Daft Childhood Pastimes

Collecting caterpillars for their egg box home, with grass cuttings and leaves. (But only for the day!)

I had large building blocks on which I drew faces and created stories in my head around these characters.

As a child, the only large vessel on which I’d sailed was the ferry to Belfast, my Dad's home city. Nevertheless, I would spend hours making intricate plans of ships with restaurants and ballrooms plus cabins allocated to various friends.

My older, late sister and I would play hospitals with our dolls, using manicure sets as the tools for operations. None of these activities are particularly strange, I guess!

Ixion I used to love 'looking after' caterpillars.
Ashcombe I love the sound of your intricate plans.
I'd love to get as absorbed in a project as I did as a child.

In the summer months, my sister and I used to love pressing the soft tar blobs that appeared in between the cobbles in the ‘entry’ behind our rented terraced house in Old Trafford ...

Yep, two weird kids.
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keeping slugs as pets in glass jars! Gave them food not quite sure what it was can't remember

I used the Pools coupon, that came through the letterbox, as a register for my dolls school.
My friend and I used to slide down the stairs on a suitcase !!!
I don’t think parents knew.

Fannycornforth.No not anything as weird or odd as that..so that would be just you then??

Oh and bringing dandelions home from the park across the road and putting them in our bedroom in a jam jar of water, then feeling upset when mummy threw them out telling us they would make us wet our beds ...
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Always a performer putting on singing and dancing shows complete with written programmes. Even with no audience I used to put my heart and soul into it!

Playing in derelict building sites up close to London railway lines. I shudder now.

As children in a large old Victorian house in which lived 5 families, we used to get jars and hunt for snails in the garden and each collecting various bits of grass, stalks, pebbles etc then put the lid on with holes in and watch what the snails did through the glass kept us busy for many a day.

I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy this unusual thread today Fanny!
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We used to make nests on the ground out of twigs and grass and thought that the pigeons and sparrows were very ungrateful as they didn’t show any interest in them at all!

Glorybee
Those sparrows didn't know a good thing when they saw it!

tanith your childhood home with five families sounds magical

I used to sit my younger brother on a tin tray and push him down the stairs! (Slate floor at the bottom, miracle he survived!)

Urmstongran

Oh and bringing dandelions home from the park across the road and putting them in our bedroom in a jam jar of water, then feeling upset when mummy threw them out telling us they would make us wet our beds ...
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Only if you ate them. In French they are called pissenlits.....

Don’t know if I should admit to this or not!
My granny had a beautiful garden and I spent many hours looking for fairies. ?

In our large garden I used to like to climb trees and “spy” on my parents, sometimes with a brother.
I also liked to wrap things up , books for example.

Anyone have an imaginary friend?
I didn't, but my aunty had an imaginary horse when she was about 5.
My Nan told me that everyday they'd go shopping on the high street.
One day they returned home from shopping, and the little girl burst into tears.
She'd left the horse outside the butcher's.
They had to go all the way back and get it.

I had a pet earthworm called Carlo who lived in a tin box.

Racing down a very steep hill on roller skates. There was a blind bend so those not racing would when necessary, yell "a car's coming".

Spent hours playing in an enormous abandoned house, sliding down the banisters. We convinced ourselves the 'Chinese room' was haunted and dare one another to go in ...... alone.

Collecting elephant hawk moth larvae then putting it into a jam jar with rose-bay willow, its breeding plant, then watching it hatch into the most spectacular moth.
Pressing leaves and wild flowers. Fishing for sticklebacks. Looking in hedgerows for birds nests.

Brother and I used to sit and giggle if a mouse-trap went off if we had visitors. Mum was like Mrs Bucket and would have had an answer ready---while glaring at us two. She wouldn't have dared say we had mice It was hilarious.

I also made perfume for my mother from a concoction of flower petals from the garden usually in a jam jar, which she accepted with good grace before she chucked it down the sink

When I was very young, probably pre school, I remember making "stew" from garden ingredients, great clods of mud, and large stones with a bit of water to mix with the mud to make gravy.

We'd go looking for newts in a nearby pond behind our garden, took them home in jam jars and put them in the bath, my mother usually had ten pink fits when she discovered them, so we'd take them back to the pond and let them go!

I also remember her going ballistic when we put a load of conkers on an open fire we had in the dining room and they were pinging round the room

I liked to go in the garden shed and rearrange my father's tools, which he never appreciated

My friend would bring her dog round to my house, a smallish sort of Old English and we'd dress him up in my school uniform complete with beret, he was so lovely and docile, he just put up with it.

My mum made us a tent by putting an old sheet over the washing line and pegging it in the ground. I loved that

I also loved playing with paper dolls and dressing them up, gave them all names, I suppose that was quite normal though!

I used to love making mud pies, adding hedge leaves for more moisture. Also did the flower petals (roses) in water to make perfume.
Also, like you, J52, used old pools coupons as class registers! (I eventually became a teacher, funnily enough ?).
I also remember using the side panel of an old shed in our back garden as a raft, pretending I was sailing down treacherous waters! (Until it was thrown away).
Simple things, really, but lots of fun.