What was your favourite activity to do as a child?

[grannyinapram]

Artsy-
My teacher scribbled on a piece of paper for us to colour in. It was so simple but the whole class went mad for it!

physical-
Having a few kids in a circle lifting up a sheet and trying to run to the other side before it falls.

Watching the queens nose. Defacing my girls world head. Collecting puppy in my pocket.

Making perfume with hydrangea petals 😀

Reading, swimming

Playing teacher with my brother and sister I was the teacher as I was the eldest, hours of barbies with my sister and making our garden into a fair or playground and trying to charge the neighbour kids 10p to come in and it worked some times 😂

Horse riding, horses, real or pretend.

80's child. Parents could never have afforded a horse. From age 8 I was dropped at the local riding school at weekends and holidays at 8am and stayed till 5pm. Mucked out, tacked up, filled Haynets, water buckets, led ponies in lessons. Zero pay, but the hope of a ride back bareback on a horse taking them to the fields at the end of the day.

Looking back you would never get away with it now, kids riding horses along an A road bareback often leading another two. Never mind the child labour. I loved every second though. We did get a hot pastie from the local bakery for lunch and I can still remember how amazing those were.

Making DJ tapes.

Getting a blank tape and recording your favourite songs off the radio then talking over them with a microphone!

Reading books, comics - Famous five, secret seven, James Hadley Chase, Pacesetters, Beano, Mandy (Mandy was soooo exciting!). Basically reading anything I could lay my hands on.

Making pies out of everything mud, shampoo, talcum powder.
DD is the same it is annoying as a parent.

Drawing fashionable clothes with dreams of the life as a fashion designer. Never happened my drawings were crap.

@brokengate same here re helping out at the stables - it was definitely child labour! We used to go off and explore in the woods around the stables, on foot or with ponies. So much freedom in comparison with my DC.

Exploring in the woods

Taking turns to bump down the stairs in a sleeping bag
Love this too. Fun times sometimes 3 would slide down together. ❤

Depends on age but reading and drawing/colouring in we're favourites for years.

Gosh! So many of you had such fab childhoods. Theses are the kind of things I dreamt of as a child. I spent every minute I could reading, but that was the only thing I could do. I read to escape the awful reality of life, I’d be transported into another world and imagine I was doing all the things listed here. The poster reading Famous five whilst eating hot crumpets, whilst laying against fresh linen....How lucky!

The poster reading Famous five whilst eating hot crumpets, whilst laying against fresh linen....How lucky! @Plutoe
Do it this year for yourself and some of things that jump out at you.
I love a sneaky swing in the park.

I loved to read, write and draw

Reading. Sewing and stuff. Still at it!

Reading
Horse Riding and Helping out at the Stables
Making perfume with Rose petals
Riding my bike round the estate when we lived on naval base
Walking home from school collecting wild flowers on the way
Swimming with Dad
Many visits to parks and lochs with parents

Brownie Camp
Making cakes with Nanna and Planting flowers with Grandad

Reading (Enid blyton - Mallory towers was my fave and I must’ve read them 100 times) I used to dream of being sent to boarding school and used to beg my dm to send me - I even used to pack a little suitcase with clothes and a sandwich and apple for the “journey” on the train!

Also letter writing, I had several pen pals (found through teletext or magazines like Bunty) and spent hours writing letters and drawing pictures to send. The excitement when you received a letter back!

Also myself and friends formed secret gangs and would make up activity packs for one another with messages written in secret codes. I used to spend a lot of time in the evenings doing that - I loved stickers, stamps, transfers - anything like that.

And playing out in summer - all the neighbourhood kids would be out playing hopscotch, handstands, Kingey, what time is it mr wolf?, British bulldog, ropes etc - or we just made up our own games. My family were pretty poor really but god, I had a happy childhood. Feel a bit sad that dd’s is so different. She is growing up in a wealthy family and wants for nothing but they dont play out nowadays and the only interest she seems to have is Roblox, minecraft etc. I have to bribe her to read books!

Reading
Playing with friends
Sleepovers and tent garden ones in the summer
Sitting in our big tree for hours just chilling
Catching bugs and drawing and writing about them
Swimming with chips for tea every Friday

Brook jumping, and there was a rope over the same brook tied to a tree, loved it ( though DM didn’t love it when we went home filthy from falling in the brook yet again) 😂

Climbing trees and swinging from a home made swing in the trees. Rowing an inflatable dinghy on a lake in summer with my brother and diving off it. Roaming around the local hills and beaches as a pack of children in Donegal in the summer at the caravan park where most of my N Irish town decamped to. Swimming in the freezing sea there (and having hot chocolate afterwards!). Playing kick the van with the neighbourhood kids. Having family barbeques where my dad would drink a glass or two of wine and become a much more relaxed and funny person than usual. And sledging down the stairs in sleeping bags gets a vote here too while pretending we were in a boat coming down a waterfall (and then tying a rope to the banisters to haul ourselves up by while pretending we were climbing Everest). Skipping games, especially double skipping. Hula hooping. Playing with yo yos. Watching children’s TV with my siblings on a Saturday morning. And of course reading. I was very fortunate to have an absolutely idyllic childhood.

Oh yes forgot making perfume with petals! I did that too!

Swapping fancy paper.

I used to read lots, and spent lots of time drawing. I remember playing with barbie dolls, and my brothers lego.

From around 6 years old or so we lived near two little play parks, then we moved a few years later and the new house had five parks nearby! I remember spending lots of time playing outside with other children.

My children have a very different childhood, it's sad really.

Reading, riding, pretending to be a hobbit. I was weirdly obsessed with the 70s animated Lord of the Rings film.

Actually, that's not far off my adult life...