What recess games have you played?

I always tried to play on the swings...they were usually full so I didn't get to often.

After school care was in a giant lawn without any equipment and I didn't have any friends that stayed late...so I spent my time picking clover flowers.

I was a hopscotch, tetherball girl.

Oh gosh, we played so many games! Aside from those in the op, we ran races---sprints & relay races, mostly. We played things like Red Light/Green Light, Hide & Seek, Mother, May I?, & Red Rover, tag, freeze tag, Statues, Simon Says, HORSE, etc.

And we played with things like string--doing Cat's Cradle & Jacob's ladder type things.   We brought collections to show off & trade.  We did all sorts of hand-clapping games.

I don't recall playing jacks & marbles often, but we did occasionally.  And we played both cards & dreidel for money, LOL! 

We also played pretty involved make believe games that basically involved any zany plot and one or more people chasing some other groups of people. Sometimes it was boys vs girls, sometimes it involved some old witch or hag (We'd cook up "witch's brew" in the root systems of the trees!  ), sometimes it was cops & robbers, etc.

Plus we did play on the playground equipment.  We had two merry go rounds and one was huge!  You could easily fit a dozen kids on it, and a half dozen others would spin it so fast that kids would have to hold on for dear life or else fall off.  And we did fall off quite a bit.  And then someone would scream to stop moving it so the fallen person could be retrieved. 

We had uneven bars and a few of those domed metal climbing structures.  We did have a few decent injuries on those things in my day--broken bones and stitches!   And yet they all stayed there as long as the school was open.  No parents complained.  We were just urged to "be careful!".

We had swings and they were the hot commodity, baby.  You bolted for those swings.  Then you went as high as you could and dared one another to jump!   And jump we did!   Yeah, I don't know how we lived through recess sometimes, really!   



(ETA:  In the winter we'd have snowball fights.  But it took us so darn long to get in and out of our outerwear that we spent more of recess in the coat room than outside!)Save

I went to a crappy private school that had no playground equipment because they were afraid of being sued if a kid fell off a swing and got hurt. They had a big ratty old empty blacktop area behind the school that had faded paint four square and hopscotch boards but no playground balls for the kids to play with. Which was really weird considering in the wintertime they would plow all the snow into a giant pile, it would get icy and the kids would slide down it and jump off of it.  

Honestly I don't really remember doing anything on the playground except hanging out by the door waiting for the minute I could go back inside, especially in the winter. I also remember dragging lunchtime out in the cafeteria as long as possible to cut down on the amount of time I had to be outside.

Lots of skipping games - they were the favourite.
We also used to play Charlies Angels, we'd re-enact that weeks episode with lots of hair flicking, strutting around and play fighting! It was great.

There was no such thing as the rubber play surfaces when I was young.  Our playgrounds were either dirt or pavement.  Nothing says "Ouch!" like falling off the monkey bars onto asphalt!

And because a few were paved, vehicles would sometimes drive on them to get closer to doors of the school, so mid game you'd hear "Watch out!  Car!".

I can't even imagine reactions if schools let cars drive through playgrounds today!
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We played Buck Buck. One person would stand with back against a tree. Those with strong backs would crouch in a line with first person in line's head against the tree stander' stomach. Tree stander would yell "Buck Buck number one coming" and a girl would run and straddle over the lined up girls, and climb the backs to get to tree stander. Then buck buck number two coming, three, four... until the weight of it all would send us to the ground. If you weren't playing, it was something to watch. All this before Advil was OTC.

We gambled when I was a kid. We shot marbles to win bigger and better marbles. It was the best thing ever. Until we couldn't do it any longer.

We also flicked hockey cards. That was the boys who liked that.

I liked marbles myself.

We also did jumpsies which I brought to my school and was the first one to do it. It is aka Chinese skipping.

I must have a crappy memory because I only remember one thing from my elementary playground years. There were the usual swings, slides, a merry-go-round, a teeter-totter, and a giant metal spider (the legs were ladders to the body).

However, I always ran to one of two (the "girls" one, not the "boys" one!) long, large cement tubes/tunnels to hang out. I think these things were really from a construction site. Each one had a crude hole drilled on the top in the middle, and the boys would climb on it and spit at us through the hole.

I would have much rather stayed in during recess and read or clean the chalkboards!

I should have tried that!!!
I was too much of a teacher's pet to have pulled it off though!

We had 3 concrete tunnels,too. Everyone loved them.