Tell Unicef UK the playground games you loved as a child - £300 voucher to be won!

[EmmaMumsnet]

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Unicef UK are launching this years Soccer Aid Playground Challenge and would love to hear about the playground games you used to play at school and what games your children play now. The playground is the highlight of the school day where children can burn off all their energy and play with their friends; share below what you loved to play when you were at school and if any of the games have passed down generations.

Here’s what Unicef has to say: “This year, we’re asking all schools across the UK to join us for the Soccer Aid Playground Challenge to help raise money to help give more children around the world a childhood full of play. The idea is simple – teachers team up with their pupils, design an obstacle course that they will take on together, and fundraise to help children in danger in June 2019. Ask your school to sign up here and we’ll send everything you need for kick off - including fundraising and teaching resources to bring Soccer Aid to life for the whole school.”

Alex, Head of Sports for St Dunstan’s RC Primary School, Manchester says: “The Playground Challenge was the perfect way to get the whole school together for a great cause. Everyone (including staff!) had the best time raising money to help children all over the world.”

So what playground games did you love as a child? Were you Queen of hopscotch? Or perhaps you practised your circus skills with stilts? Maybe you created your own playground football league or were seriously skilled at skipping? Do you know if your children still play the same games now at school?

Everyone who posts below will be entered into a prize draw where one Mumsnetter will win a £300 voucher of their choice (from a list)

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Terms and conditions apply

There was a compass painted on the playground in my junior school; we invented lots of games with this. One person stood in the middle, and was blindfolded. Everyone else stood on the compass points: the person in the middle had to work out where everyone else was from their disguised voices. Sometimes the person in the middle was spun round, and also had to work out which way they themselves were facing.

Skipping - oddly, it doesn't seem to be a thing in my DCs school anymore.

'It' as well.

What I would say is the prioritising of football does mean other children don't run around as much, a small group playing football can take over the bulk of the playground space, meaning that other children's games end up being squished around it. There's a lot to be said for playgrounds with things in them like fences, huts etc, rather than a big open space to stop football games taking over the bulk of the space, so other children play running around games too. (Probably not what you want to hear)

I didn't have the co-ordination for the skipping and various complex throw-the-ball-at-the-wall games, but I liked British Bulldog and racing around taking it it turns to give piggy-backs.

I used to play a game that we just called 'elastics', it was a big loop of elastic that two people opposite each other had around their ankles and we used to jump the elastic singing rhymes.

Yes I remember spending hours playing elastics like the previous poster.

We played Cats cradle, Stuck in the mud, What's the time Mr Wolf, Hide and Seek, and the elastics game.

Oh wow cats cradle...I had forgotten about that!

Lots of 'what's the time Mr Wolf', 'It, British bulldog, hopscotch, generally remember doing loads of cartwheels and 'bridges' on the school fields

I loved leap frog and tag, cartwheels and handstands on the field in the summer.
Making daisy chains and playing with sycamore seeds to make 'helicopters'.
Cricket, football and rugby on the green with the neighbours and manhunt and hide and seek in the woods.
Catching grasshoppers, frogs and slow worms and releasing them again.
Ahhhh those were the days!

French skipping, which we called ‘jingle jangle’ and our invented game ‘supergirls’ which involved flying round the playground with our coats tied as capes.

Jacks! I loved it - I actually bought a set as an adult to teach my kids :) My junior school’s playground had a single path of yellow paving tiles right across the middle of the playground and each tile had a game going on. We’d run out at breaktime to make sure we could get on a tile :)
There was always skipping, hopscotch, What’s the time Mr Wolf and clapping games going on too.

How could I forget ‘kissy catch’?! Oranges and lemons, clapping games.

Skipping
British Bulldog
Cats cradle
What's the time Mr Wolf
Rounders
Football
Hopscotch
Kids chase!
Clapping games - we used to go up high, down low and donlots of actions to silly songs we made up with claps.

My kids play: tig, hide and seek, Godzilla earth (!), Wakanda (they cross their arms like the black panther and push into each other), bean bag throwing games, skipping, ball games. My son that goes to a special needs PRU has special equipment to play on - bikes, trikes, etc.

Block 123. where someone was Block and stood by a tree and everyone else ran off to hide and had to get back to the tree without being tagged by block. and British bulldog with the boys! Great time!

In Infants (Key stage 1) we loved to play ring games where everyone would join hands and sing songs like ‘The farmer’s in his Den’ or ‘In and out the Dusky bluebells’ or even ‘The Hokey-cokey!’ I still remember when we got almost everyone in the playground joining in and we all got extra play time!
In junior school (key stage 2) we did a lot of clapping games like ‘A sailor went to Sea sea sea’ or ‘See see my Bonny’ plus of course the classic British Bulldog (until it got banned!)

British Bulldog! Until it got banned. That was a sad day. Sob.

Down, down baby clapping game! Loved it

As children we used to enjoy games such as skipping, hopscotch, marbles, jacks, and using hula hoops.

Much more energetic than games played today. They seem to prefer playing with their tablet pc's and iphones.

We used to love playing elastics - far more popular than skipping with our crowd!

Great jingles too - Betty Boo Boo, England Ireland Scotland Wales etc. Must have kept us fit!

Hopscotch, loved it, I played it with my own children when they were younger. I think I'm going to have to show my grandkids when they're a bit older how to play too.I also liked skipping even though I wasn't very good at it.

We used to play Hopscotch, What's the Time Mr Wolf? & various skipping rope games! I remember just running around the whole of break/lunch times - we were ALWAYS on the go! In the summer when we were allowed on the grass field - we would spend our breaktimes practicing handstands & cartwheels.. we would also break Leapfrog which was great fun!
It's great thinking back to those carefree times :)

Usually games were just a few of us and gradually got bigger and bigger as more joined or grouped together - definitely a case of "the more the merrier"
Simon Says
Big group skipping
Hopscotch
Tag
Putting on shows prompted by tv programmes and the idea we could get constructive criticism from our peer group to then apply to be on a talent show! Needless to say all ideas and rehearsals stayed in the playground - happy days

Gosh, loads. Skipping, French skipping (elastic), jacks, it/tag, stuck in the mud, Grandmother’s footsteps (though we didn’t call it that), cops and robbers, kiss chase, follow the leader... break times seemed infinitely long!

British bulldog, kids chase (which was against the rules), skipping, basketball, stick in the mud

My whole year group would play together, it could get chaotic but it was brilliant

We loved British bulldogs and catchy kissy!

Elastics - jingle jangle centre spangle jingle jangle out!

We also used to play horses and pretend we had horses a lot.