1: Jigsaw puzzles. When I was very young I would do them until I was bored with them, then I would turn the puzzle pieces upside down and do them again sans picture. As we got older, we would get a big puzzle for Christmas and spend the week between Christmas and New Year's doing puzzles on the card table. As we finished each one, we would spread newspaper over it and start the next one because we couldn't bear to take them apart as quickly as we wanted to start a new one.
2. Life. We usually didn't finish the game, which was just as well because that way no one got hurt feelings over not winning.
3. Chinese checkers. We got quite good at it. I suspect nowadays a 6 year old in practice could beat me hands down.
4. Rummy. Gin rummy, rummy 500... We went backpacking a lot to cabins (all the camping and distance from people, none of the sleeping-on-the-ground-on-a .5 inch mat). Card games were easily portable and endlessly amusing.
5. Solitaire. FreeCell (which we simply called solitaire), variations on FreeCell, Clock Solitaire, Pyramid Solitaire, Idiot's Delight... I had a book of 101 solitaire games and we worked our way through it. Cards: See above.
6. Rte. 29. A game we made up, involving riding our bikes round and round the court we lived on. One person was designated "Mother", the others were children who were allowed to start riding when mother arrived and had to stop when mother called their name. Some years later my mother expressed her amusement at this game; we lived in a small development off Rte. 29 and to go anywhere one had to drive - all of us children spent a lot of time being driven places and having to wait for our mothers to pick us up or drop us off.
7. Tag and Freeze Tag. Excellent for working off large amounts of excess energy.
8. Red Rover. I adored Red Rover. Are kids allowed to play it nowadays?
9. Four Square. Bouncy rubber balls, a game where skill rather than size counted (being the smallest in my class, this was an important factor to me on the playground), what was there not to love?
10. Clue. We didn't have a game of clue, so it was a prime favorite when we could talk our friends into playing. They of course, having the game, were bored with it and it wasn't an easy job convincing them.
2 comments:
I loved Red Rover, too. I can't imagine why we were allowed to play it... 8)
I forgot about Chinese checkers and marbles and Red Rover, we played all those too. What a lot of energy we must have had.
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