What games did you used to play after school?

We used to play a game called "tin can tommy"where you had to kick a can while the others ranand hid.We also played with whips,tops and chalks,but what was strange was that there was a clear season for all these games.One day it was ball play, the next a few weeks of big skipping ropes with all the rhymes.
I have another version of the ball rhyme:
One ,two three a laira
I saw sister Sarah
Sitting on her bumberlaira
Eating chocolate biscuits.
How many did she eat?

Hop scotch, collecting car numberplate numbers, building dens from the piles of grass clippings left by the local authority gardeners, dens 'over the fields' where we hid a girl who had run away from her soldier father, (for all of an afternoon we smuggled food to her), walks and picking wild flowers.

Ball, skipping, jacks, making dens in the marshes, swapping coloured beads, swimming in the sea from around 12 years old........Happy times

Just to raise the tone a bit - we used to play a game called Bad Egg. It was a complicated game we played in the street (no parked cars in those days ). There was a ball involved but unfortunately I can't remember the rules! Did anyone else out there play this? (Should add that this was in a N. London suburb.)

When I was about 5 I remember taking part in a scientic study on how boys and girls urinated sorry I am lowering the tone here.

Oooh Jangly tell us more; I used to play Doctors and Nurses with my Mum's friend's 2 boys but of course it was very innocent......

give me shout so I dont miss them.

I know some more....

I'm saving 'em for another day.

In the quiet corner.

jangly I knew if anyone would remember the naughty rhyme's it would be you

We played some norty games too. I'm not going to tell you about those.



And I'm certainly not going to tell my grandchildren!

I still do the last two things. My grandsons are very impressed at my skill.

And I play the horses game with them. (well, they play it with me really)

Oh yes. We bounced a ball to this rhyme:

one two three canary
I saw sister Mary
with a soldier in the dairy
One two three canary.

Leg over ball on each rhyming word.

I used to play ball up against the side of the house. This really worried my poor mum as the house was already buttressed to stop it falling down!
I got very skilled at doing that to very long rhymes. (the house was fine)

Well, I've already mentioned somewhere else, putting pennies (pre metric of course) on the railway lines (getting them beautifully flattened by the oncoming push and pull. Don't think we could pass that on to our grandkids really. Trains are quite a bit faster these days!
Also we used to call in at the big post office and ask for stamp paper (the white strips down the edges of the pages of stamps) which we used to play post offices with.
We used to cross our arms together, two by two, behind our backs and gallop together like horses pulling a cart. That was good at lunchtime. It got us home to our dinners fast.
We used to go to the river and fish out tadpoles with our nets. (How we didn't fall in and drown I don't know! )
It was bikes with us rather than roller skates. We went round and round as well. Weird isn't it?!
Oh, and there was a really high slide in the playground, which they took away later. On the usual grounds.

Jacks (four funny little nobbly things and a small ball which you threw in the air and caught on the top of your hand while the ball was coming down again - get it??) I think I still have them somewhere! Hopscotch marked out in chalk on the pavement; skipping; up and down the road on my bike; all things an only child could play on her own

notso my 5 yr old Grandson has just discovered knocky nine doors, he has just started to play out with the older children in the street and on Sunday we had an irrate man at the door complaining that my Gs had repeatedly knocked on his door, but GS has not quite caught on that you are supposed to run away after you knock he was reprimanded

We threaded a tennis ball onto a yard or so of elastic, stood backs against a wall and swung the ball side to side singing rhymes. Can't remember what we called the game! One of the rhymes was 'Have a cigarette sir?, no sir, why sir?, cos I've got a cold sir, where'd you get the cold sir?, from the North Pole sir, what you doing there sir?, catching polar bears sir, how many polar bears did you catch sir?, one sir, two sir, three sir, etc etc.' On each 'sir' you lifted your leg and bounced the ball under it against the wall.

We also did french skipping. Two balls. French knitting with wooden cotton reels. In the winter when it was almost dark we played knock down ginger....knocking on doors and running away.

Hopscotch! Rarely any money to buy chalk so we improvised with bits of coal or a bunch of grass to draw with. My mum had a crinoline lady ornament that I used to sneak out of the house to draw our hopscotch with. It wasn't until all her feet and half her knickerbockers were worn away that it was noticed.

I would play two baller singing all the rhyme's oranges and lemon, Dr Forster,Miss Polly, Sailor went to sea sea sea etc. There was a rude thyme we would sing when the grown up's were not about, I will have to get my brains cells into action and try and remember it. I could never keep three up at once and would stare longingly at the big girls who could!

We would make french skipping ropes with begged and borrowed elastic bands and sing similar songs as we dashed in and out getting our feet tangled as the rope was lifted higher and higher.

Brings back memories just thinking about it

On the way home from school, we used to play marbles in the gutter - how would modern parents view that