Share your stories of youthful springtime games to win Peter Rabbit goodies

[EmilyMumsnet]

Spring is in the air – our noses are a-twitch, our tails a-quiver – and to celebrate, the Peter Rabbit Club are giving one lucky Mumsnetter a fabulous Peter Rabbit book bundle! What’s more, ten runners-up will receive a copy of Peter Rabbit’s Hop To It! sticker book, packed with stickers and fun activities to keep little bunnies busy this Easter.

For a chance to win these goodies, tell us how you enjoyed the spring air when you were but a wee bunny yourself. We particularly want to hear about the classic outdoor games you used to play. Hopscotch anyone?

To enter the competition, just post your top outdoor games on this thread and we’ll pick our favourites. This competition is sponsored by the Peter Rabbit Club.

This competition is now closed
Winner: jeee
Runners-up: KittyFan83, DancingHat, Wotshudwehave4T, itsnotjustaslap, CopperPan, Clawdy, Dollyemi, riverwell, Bostin, buckley1983

Thanks for all your wonderful stories

Congratulations to the winners! We'll be in touch shortly.

We would set up a tent in the garden and sleep there.
At school, skipping games got exciting when Neneh Cherry etc sang about Double Dutch, and we'd try to copy the Americans. Stringing elastic bands into a rope, each end held by someone (first at their knees, then hips, waist, underarm, head) and we'd have to jump over each height.
Outside school , there was a bit of swampy overgrown waste ground nearby. We'd go on expeditions and find tadpoles etc there, building dens etc.

We played 'kingy' draw a chalk line and bounce a tennis ball on the floor once on your side then bounce once on your opponents side, like tennis but on the floor. We played french skipping a huge loop of elastic bands with two people either end inside the loop stretching it and another skipping around on and in the band. I loved my space hopper too, it was called tiger lilly!

We played hopscoth scotch it was so much fun and if we didn't have chalk we played what's the time mr wolf that was brillant too x

We played at Funerals! Our older cousin had us searching the garden for shrivelled-up earthworms or dead bees and we would solemnly bury them and stick twigs in a cross shape into the mound while she said " You are dead, little worm (or bee or beetle).....Now Rest In Peace!" in sepulchral tones. Then we would clap reverently!

Not a game as such, but I used to love going to the top of a hill, laying down and rolling, rolling, rolling all the way to the bottom. Even better if the grass had just been cut, as by the time you reached the bottom, you'd be covered head to toe in cut grass!

We used to pretend we were having ballet classes outside and leap across the front garden.
Other times, we would build forts in the woods or clear the leaves and branches from the creeks to make the water flow faster and pretend we were making white water rapids and waterfalls for Barbie and GI Joe dolls.
Other days, we played cowboys and Indians- galloping around the garden shouting and chasing each other. Sometimes, we would play TV tag where you had to run from whoever was "it" and say the name of a TV show if you were about to get tagged.
The best fun was Flashlight tag which we could play at night in the neighbourhood before our parents called us in.

Making outlines of houses and castles to play in, using freshly mown grass to mark out where walls would be, with my sister and brothers. Was so much fun deciding what each room was and what we would have in it and then acting out our stories.

Off Ground Touch - like tig/tag but if you leaped onto something higher than the ground you were 'safe' and couldn't be got. Loved that one.

Rounders,Tennis,Football,British Bulldog,Curbie,Whats the time mr wolf,skipping,kick the can.

We used to play a big game with a load of friends, of tracker, which was like a big game of hide and seek and you would be on teams

When we were very young making mud pies and selling them in the mud bakery was one of our favourite games. Slightly later it was French skipping, later still was British Bulldog which was everyone's favourite lunchtime game. Otherwise we were out exploring on our bikes, climbing trees or making dens.

Sardines! The one game where being the smallest was an advantage...

Oh yes- the dusty bluebells! (Or was it fairy bluebells?!). Also, kicking the ball against the side of a house, in turn. We also used to do a kind of treasure hunt - we just walked round the block looking for anything interesting that could be "treasure" and we stored it all in a sock we found and kept behind a neighbour's wall! We kept visiting the sock for months if not years!

Stuck in the mud; sardines; endless hide-and-seek variants.

But best of all was a fantastic multi-generational game of rounders/baseball after a boozy Sunday barbecue in a park near our house. We had small children and an 82-year-old great aunt take part, plus a growing number of random curious park-goers who just fancied joining in. It went on for hours and was absolutely brilliant.

What's the Time Mr Wolf was always my favourite, as well as the ever popular "tag" which my daughter still plays with her friends today :)

We used to play 'the big ship sailed on the alley alley o' where we sang the rhyme and tangled ourselves up by leading everyone under the arch made the front couple and then the next and so on - if we did it sensibly we then unentangled ourselves too

I remember playing with the elastic.. Two at either end one jumping in the middle till U kind of tripped on the elastic! "Inkey pinky ponky, father had a donkey. Donkey died, father cried Inkey pinky ponky" and there was another rhyme "England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Indoors, Outdoors, Indoors, trails" endless hours of fun this was!

Played hopscotch and also two balls against a wall
Also loved skipping
Played Farmer Farmer may we cross your golden fields of corn

Nice to see other people on here remember the same games I do

I remember What's the Time, Mr Wolf?, hopscotch and hide and seek.

Once I was forgotten in a game of hide and seek. It was such a good hiding place that I didn't want to move. I realised, after some time, that everyone else had gone home for their tea

We used to put a tennis ball inside an old pair of mum's tights, stand with our backs against a wall and, holding onto the gusset of the tights, aim the ball (in the toes) to various parts of the wall while trying to avoid hitting ourselves! There were rhymes to sing and the ball had to hit the wall in certain places in the right order or you were "out" and someone else got the tights and ball.
We also did loads of clapping rhymes where you had to clap your friends' hands as well as your own. I taught this to some of my pupils a couple years ago, thought it was great fun (even if I taught them slightly altered versions of the rhymes we used!)
Elastic were big up here too, but we didn't sing about bluebells (dusty, fairy or otherwise), usually it was "Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, inside, outside, inside, on!" And you had to jump on top of the elastics on the last word or forever be scorned in the playground.

I used to go out early in the morning and play all day, going home at 5pm for tea. We used to run around the nearby fields and there was a hill and we had an old tin bath, three of us used to sit in the bath and go down the hill, especially in the snow. When I think now, it makes me cringe, but we knew no danger. Happy days!

Hopscotch was a favourite, skipping too but the ultimate was 'French Skipping'. We used to spend hours making a 'rope' with elastic bands and then have weeks of fun with it. I remember playing a lot of 'Jacks' too, in the garden. Oh, now I come to think of it, I can remember hours on my pogo stick in the kitchen, driving my mum mad, until it was warm enough to go outside and do it.

As a child I spent so much time outside, playing traditional games. I feel a bit sad that today's generation miss out on it, actually.

Games I played:
Bulldog
Allsorts/Different Kinds of
Obstacle courses/assault courses
Drawing courses for boils on the pavement using chalk

Hide and seek, also discovering the nature and writing things in our "secret diaries"

We had a wood behind our garden and we each "adopted" a tree to use as a look out point, we'd climb as high as we could (my poor mum's nerves were shot as she looked out of the kitchen window to spot her precious twins 15 feet up a tree!). We would communicate by giving our tree a rustle and making owl noises. I felt sorry for the poor dog walkers who got a fright when they spotted a bunch of 9 year olds hanging from the tree tops! We made a (painful) den in the middle of a bramble bush too! British Bulldogs was a favourite at school playtime too, as was hopscotch and skipping.

I lived on a leafy 1970s housing estate which had a very large 'island' with a ciderpress feature in the middle. All the neighbourhood children congregated there to play 'kick the can'. One person stood on the cider press, whilst everyone else had to creep up to the ciderpress without being spotted (there were plenty of trees for cover), and unsurprisingly, given the name of the game, kick the can.

The can would then be stored under the ciderpress, and would get progressively more bent and rusty. Whenever someone had a can to drink (actually, a fairly rare occurrence back in the day) we'd replace the dangerously rusty can with the new one.