Category: Traveling with Children

Recently, I had a conversation with my grandson, Jonas about his outside play. I found out that he made up many of the games he and the neighbor kids were playing. This thrilled me! I really enjoy seeing children outside, making up their own games and sharing their creativity. Just watch and see, they are having a great time doing it! Whether they are making up their own games or playing with toys these are great experiences.  I believe it is so good for children to spend a lot of time outside and to come up with their own fun. I have many fond memories of homemade fun and of my children and nephews playing all over Redding Mountain. Below is another Cotton Patch article that was written by my mother-in-law on her childhood games. After you read the article please leave a comment about one of your favorite childhood games. –Reda

What did children do to occupy their minds and free time when there were no TV’s, no Jam Boxes, no stereos nor even radios? There were, also, no telephones on which to talk to friends. During, and for several years following the Great Depression, most parents that I knew did not have money to spend on gasoline to run around from one activity to another. There were basketball games associated with the schools, but even those were not attended by many people that lived beyond walking distance. So what did the children do for recreation?

If you can imagine having no TV’s, no computers, no radios, etc., and if you can picture a home that is not filled with things from Toys ‘R Us or Schwinn’s Cyclery, from K-Mart or even the Dollar Store, then you may be able to understand the task of “finding something to do”. Families were somewhat larger, then, and parents relied on the older siblings to watch for and entertain the younger ones. What better way to keep up with the little ones than to play games with them? Many of the games played during that time had survived through several generations, and some of them are still being played even today. It continues to amaze me to learn that people who grew up in Texas and West Virginia played a lot of the same games that I played while growing up in Alabama.

Some outdoor games that were favorites for groups of children included Hide and Go Seek, Red Rover, Red Rover, Farmer in the Dell, Drop the Handkerchief, Mother, May I?, Hop Scotch, Annie-Over, and many others. Kick the Can was not so popular, but it was so ingenious, that I must mention it. Most children could not afford a new ball every time something happened to their old one, but they always had access to an old tin can. What can one do with an old can? It can be kicked from a base, and while the player in the field is retrieving it, the kicker can try to run to a base and back home, before being tagged. Who needs a ball?

The tin can was also used to provide other forms of recreation. With its label still intact, it could be a can of food on the shelf in a make-believe home. But the most fun that I experienced with tin cans was by using them as a short version of Tom Walkers. (You may better know them as stilts). Tin cans were substituted for the wooden legs, and it was not so far to the ground if one fell down. To make the “walkers”, two holes were punched in the bottoms of two cans by using a “rock” hammer and a nail. (If you could get the holes punched without smashing a finger or causing the nail to fly through the air and land in some unknown place, you were quite lucky!) A rope was then threaded through the holes so that both ends of the rope were on the outside. While in a standing position, a would-be walker held the ends of the rope firmly in his hands as he placed each foot on the bottom of a can. Holding the ropes tightly enough to keep the cans in contact with the feet, one could thus walk around feeling like a giant. Taller cans made taller giants, naturally, but they were not nearly so scary as Tom Walkers on which one’s feet were about 36 inches off the ground.

Playing House was definitely for girls, but sometimes the younger boys were persuaded to join in to help make a *real *family. I enjoyed two different kinds of playing house. One was definitely a fair weather activity, but the other one could be played indoors or outdoors, and the cost of all the equipment in either case was practically nothing.

The fair weather house was built outside, preferably in a lightly wooded area. The “house” was outlined on the ground with limbs and sticks, or rocks and occasionally bricks. Rooms were also outlined, and sometimes pretty green moss was laid like carpet on some of the floors. Inside the house, various lengths of wooden boards laid across two rocks became anything from a chair, a sofa, a bed, or a table. If one had bricks, layers of boards and bricks made good cabinets with several shelves. Pieces of colored glass made beautiful dishes, and leaves of various sorts became green vegetables to be cooked. Dirt and water could be mixed up to make mud pies or anything you wanted it to be.

The amount of fun that one had with these simple activities was limited only by one’s lack of imagination. Were those the “Good Ole Times”? I’ll leave that to your imagination.

When a child’s imagination is not directed by ready-made toys, programs and directed activities, he does not as readily suffer from boredom. A child, who creates an object or a situation, will not be as critical as when someone else creates it…he will more likely be content.