Two Favorite Recess Games

Two of my favorite activities that I enjoyed doing when I was in grade school, was jumping rope and roller-skating. I was the best in my grade school at hot peppers. Every day at recess when I wasn't roller-skating, I was jumping rope. If you wanted to play you needed to start by turning the rope at one of the ends. Then who ever missed a jump when they jumped the rope would move to the next spot. A person would get two turns turning the rope before they got to jump. We might of gotten two misses when we jumped the rope.

One of the games was called under-waters. The rope was sent back and forth on the ground. Later the rope went over our heads, and we would jump before it got to our feet.

One game was called high waters. The rope was off the ground, and we had to jump high off the ground without missing. My favorite game was called hot-peppers. The children turning the rope would turn it as fast as they could. The person jumping would jump as fast as they could.

One of the little sayings we said while we were jumping went something like this. Down by the ocean down by the sea. Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it onto me. I told Ma, Ma told Pa. Johnny got a licking ha! ha! ha! How many lickings did he get? 1,2,3,4 etc. till we missed a jump.

My favorite game of all was double-dutch. This was with two ropes at the same time. Two children would turn two ropes at the same time. There were several other games I remember playing in grade school that I would like to mention. Some of these games were hopscotch, jacks, marbles, tether ball. There were the monkey bars, swings and slides. Tug of war was with a rope several children on either end. They had a mark on the ground. Whoever pulled the other team over the mark that team won, Red Rover Red Rover this game had two teams. We held hands. Each team would take a turn they would say Red Rover Red Rover send Johnny right over. Johnny would start running as fast as he could and try to break the hand chain. If he got thru he was able to bring someone back with him to his side, and they would be on Johnny's team. Then the other side would get a turn. It was a fun game. Later we were not allowed to play the game because there were injuries from that game. There could of been many more games we played as a children, but it has been so long I can't remember them.