Old Time Games?

[CastIronCook2]

This weekend I introduced the stepgranddaughter to jacks, which she had never played. But when I went to buy a set, to my surprise I discovered that they're now double the size and half the weight of the ones I remember from my own childhood. Puzzled, I asked why, and a store clerk replied, "To prevent choking." ! Of course they don't handle anywhere near the same, so I shall be searching for an honest-to-goodness old-fashioned set of jacks, the little half-inch-long ones I remember so fondly.

What old-time games do you remember fondly? Which of them are still around today? Which of them are still in their original state?

[jdilmore]

the restaurant Cracker Barrel has the old time jacks I use to use. They are not the crummy light weight ones, they are the heavier ones. They have a lot of old time games. You can buy on line also.

[CastIronCook2]

Hey, jdilmore, thanks for the reference!

btw, I've also noticed that if you can find Chinese Checkers, they're not on as spacious a board as they used to be. Hard for little fingers to grab ahold of, with those tight spacings.

[pamsabear]

Jump rope, pickup sticks, jacks, hopscotch, four square, dolls, building houses out of old playing cards, card games and running around like wild indians outdoors!

Most of it was free or just cost pennies. If we were really good Mom would give us a dime on Saturday to go to the movies.

Pam

[Mom5farmboys]

When we were kids we had a small shed in the backyard that we used to play Einie-Inie-Over.

In the summer we would play hide and seek around dusk, and freeze tag too. We would go swimming, and ride bikes. We had a basketball hoop in the driveway and would play Donkey, and 4-square. Hopscotch, jumprope and croquet were fun too.

We also would take off into the woods and build forts and make trails and just explore and observe things.

In the winter we would ice skate and go sliding. Sometimes we built snowmen and if we still had the energy the snowmen would morph into snowforts. My dad had a snowblower and would blow snow up into a giant hill for us to play on.

When we were stuck in the house we would play "hide the thimble", we also played cards a lot. Double solitare, Crazy Eights, Go Fish, War and Spoons were favorites. When we got older Euker and Cribbage were popular. We played board games. We would also build indoor forts or castles by strategically placing kitchen chairs around and then draping blankets over. We would take long pieces of string and wrap them around our hands and play Cats-in-the-Cradle, and Witches Broom. We would also fold up paper in a special way and write questions on the outside of the folds, and some answers on the insides and we called them "cootie catchers", we used these to figure out who we were going to marry someday, lol.

I loved to read and would read for hours on end. I also had a pen pal and when I wasn't writing letters, I was looking forward to recieving them.