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.

Oh, and we spent a lot of time playing in a drainage channel, full of rats, and god knows what else. We were strictly forbidden to cross over the railway line, so used the drainage channel to go under the line.

We juggled two balls up against a wall. There was "overs" when you threw the ball over and "unders" and using one hand with the other behind your back.
Also jinks with metal crosses and jacks with wooden blocks. Marbles - knocking little marbles in to a dug out hole with a larger marble.
How about skipping using a long rope across the road. Before traffic stopped this fun!!!

We used to play rounders in a side street using 4 lamp posts as the bases, and we also played paper trail using bits of paper to tell the others where to go for the next clue, also we used chalk to write messages on the pavement - we were out for hours and roamed for miles - not really allowed nowadays.

Rope skipping, hopscotch, bike riding, lots of different school yard games involving a tennis ball!

At school we also used to play with marbles outside and at home we used to play boule in the garden with our dad. :)

Lots of fun!

Our games were mostly unstructured- tree climbing, den building, just 'playing' really.

I do remember whole street games of mob though, but am struggling to recall the rules. Someone please remind me. I remember shouting 123 Mob then a name.

Wet weather games were Sardines, Murder in the Dark, den building (again) and hours of putting on shows.

Kerbie, throwing the ball width ways across the road and if you hit the edge, you get to stand in the middle of the road and have another shot! My parents still live in the same house but 20 years on and you could not play this game with the amount of traffic! Standing in the middle of the road would not be the privilege of getting a shot on target anymore!!!

I used to play out with children from our street and we were all fans of the Faraway Tree stories so we'd act out stories from there! Everyone always wanted to be Silky the fairy so we had to take turns! We did lots of tree climbing and pretending we were in the magical lands.

At Easter our favourite was 'egg jarping'. Everyone had a hard boiled egg and you took it in turns to tap your eggs together, round end to round end then pointy end to pointy end. The winner was the one whose egg was either uncracked or had only one end cracked!
At the end we all rolled our eggs down the bank and then peeled and ate them. This was always on Easter Monday and a large group of us, usually with some Mums went for a picnic to Doggy Wood which had a suitable hill leading down to the woods.
Did the sun really shine every Easter in the 50s? That's how I remember it.

I loved elastics such a good group game and great for jumping in and out of too

Duck duck goose

My mum used to take us on picnics and we would play 'who can find'
My mum would name an item and me and my sister would try and be the first one to find it.

We played kerby, two people on opposite pavements and you throw a football at the edge of the kerb so that it bounces back at you (or the other person catches/retrieves it). This was on our very quiet residential village road.

We lived opposite some fields as children and in the summer the council would come every week to cut the grass. After they had finished myself and my 2 brothers (and all the other neighbourhood children) would scramble to collect the grass and build 'grass dens'. We would build walls from the cuttings and then run home to steal a sheet from mums airing cupboard to make the roof. We would spend hours out there, and even have our lunch in the den if we were lucky.
There was a brook/stream at the bottom of the fields and we would try to build bridges across it using sticks and whatever else we could find, one day we had a new fridge delivered and we used the polystyrene packaging to make a boat and sail down the stream all the way to the railway bridge (which we were NOT allowed past under any circumstance!)

Pooh sticks and red rover always meant spring to me. I don't think the kids are allowed to play red rover anymore in the school yards!

We did skipping, rounders, and elastics (where you have a long piece of elastic and do weird and wonderful jumps whilst it is around your ankles - hours of fun!)

I loved my skip it and roller skates

What's the time mr wolf was a firm favourite, always ended up with lots of giggling and it was a game that could be played by 2-102 players so everyone was included

Buy box of giant coloured chalks, go outside, DRAW!!!

We used to build dens in the tall, vaste acres of bracken up on the common by our house. We would build a maze path to it by flattening the bracken, then laugh our heads off as our parents got lost repeatedly trying to reach us to tell us it was tea time!!

We loved In and Out the Dusty Bluebells, What's theTime Mr Wolf, skipping, Pooh Sticks, and Bulldog (which I think is banned now).

whats the time mr wolf , tig and kiss chase of course. Also spent hours playing elastics where 2 people had elastic round their ankles and you had to complete a number of jumps and moves - would probably be banned these days due to health and safety !

At school, we used to play elastics, which was a bizarre game that involved skipping over elastic that was crossed in different ways. I have never met anyone, other than people who went to my primary school, that knew what I was talking about!

At home, I used to swing for hours on the swing in the garden and imagine I was making different journeys.
My siblings and I used to set up different obstacle courses using swings, slides etc and have to cross the garden without touching the ground. Looking back now, it was dangerous but so much fun. Maybe that's why I am a lot more relaxed about letting the DC try things out than DH who vetoes things I am happy with!

hutchy27 Obviously, I hadn't read your post!!!

I can also remember going out on my bike with a handlebar basket with a bottle of Tizer!! Which would explode when it was opened after the bumpy ride over a meadow to a stream where we fished for minnows and sticklebacks. Are they still in brooks? We were out all day and only went back for meals. Felt quite safe!!

We played sardines , Tag/It, Some great card games like Spit (me and one friend got really quick at playing spit, it was hilarious)

The fave that we used to play in my street was 44 Save All. You nominate a base, and someone who is "It" to guard the base. They turn their back to count to 44, everyone else runs and hides, The idea is to run to the base to touch it and shout "44 Save All!" without getting caught by the person who is "It".
Their task is to find where people are hiding to catch them, when u r caught you stay at base. They win if they catch everyone (by touching them once) and you win if you touch the base and save everyone.
It were great!
We normally used a garage door for base and the front street for hiding.