I have heard of jacks, but never played it. My Mother knew how to play it.

Sue

I can't remember how it was played. You can still find jacks at the Dollar tree though. Here's some games below

Here is a link that might be useful: How to play Jacks

My sister and I played jacks all the time, and I was excellent at it. I could play for hours without mssing any or dropping the ball. Remember the game where instead of tossing the ball up, you dropped it with your palm down and had to pick up the jacks really quickly? Clear as mud?*LOL* That was harder.

I loved playing jacks...and I know there were different games, but I don't remember the names of them. We were easily entertained back then, weren't we? ;)

I used to love playing jacks but the only variation I remember was trying to pick each one up without disturbing the others (or is that the normal way to play?)

Oh, then the one where you pick up one, then two, etc. Used to hate playing with the rubber balls, but liked playing with golf balls.

I never played jacks and didn't know anyone who played but we did have some when I was a kid.....just lumped in with all the other junky little toys we had.

I played when I was a little girl but was not very good t it. I preferred bouncing ball games like 1 2 3 o"Leary or A my name is
Husbands name is
childrens name is
live in
they all had to start with the same letter each time bouncing the ball and raising leg over it.

I loved jacks...and was very good at playing them. It's a shame that kids nowadays don't have some of the fun games that we played.

Jacks were big in our home too..even my brothers played and my Mother and Aunt would play with us.

Love playing jacks on the sidewalk in front of the house.

And what about hop scotch?

I had several sets of jacks when I was little but was never very good at it. I remember Onesies, twosies, but that's about it. I think there were several rhymes or poems you would recite. I'll look at the link above. Thanks for the memory!

We always played jacks, too. And now, looking back from a teacher's perspective, I wish kids still played them. What a great activity to help develop hand/eye coordination.

Also remembering hopscotch, redlight, release, jumping rope, riding bikes, roller skating on the street (skates with a skate key), and building great stuff in the sandbox. My best friend and I also had stilts we would use to walk around the neighborhood. How funny.

I loved jacks when I was a little girl. Some of the games I remembered are eggs in a basket and pigs in the pen.

I loved Jacks! In fact I was pretty much Jacks champion in my group.I could play for hours! A couple of years ago I played with my DGD and I'm still pretty good at it if I do say so myself.My biggest problem now is getting down on the floor.Well,getting down not so hard but getting up,a whole different story!LOL Fun Game.
Another one we enjoyed was Pick Up Stix.I still have mine from the 50's.

I quickly learned to make sure I picked up ALL the jacks....my dad used to walk around in his stocking feet and I was in big trouble if he stepped on a jack.
Great game for hand-eye coordination.

There was one game (can't remember what we called it) where you clapped your hands before picking up the jacks..then, there was "around the world" where you picked up the jack and moved it around the ball while it was in the air then letting it bounce once and catching....we played for hours...have you ever stepped on one of those little metal suckers bare foot?

I loved jacks,and we played all the time.Sometimes we had to use little pebbles for the jacks and golf balls for the ball.We were poor,BUT we didn't realize it.
Kathi

The 2 G-kids are grabbing the jacks every minute they get free. They love it. They both say it is better than game-boys!
I'm going to buy them pick up sticks next, bet they love that game also.
Kathi, we never had real jacks either (learned at a friends house) we used pebbles and what ever little ball we could find...great memories!

We played hop scotch and pick up stix too. I didn't play marbles though...although I collect them now, and have literally hundreds of them....probably 25 big jars full.

Nobody's mentioned potsy! Or was that only in NYC?

babies
eggs in the basket
piggies
fast piggies
ups and downs
around the world
frying eggs
turning eggs
double bounce
and do not forget to toss the ball and pat the playing surface after every series.

That is how the 4th and 5th grade girls taught me when I was in the 1st grade.

anybody remember playing Solitary with a REAL deck of Cards??
I have several sisters and we used to play speed solitary. Anybody ever do that? You sit facing each other (2, 3 or 4 players) each with your own deck...as you get your aces to lay in the middle, anybody can play on it. It gets to be very, very fast-paced! And strategic towards the end when you are waiting for one or two cards to turn up...so much fun!
and...jacks, redlight/greenlight, mother may I, simon says, lincoln logs, jigsaw puzzles...

Salgal, my grandma and I used to play "double solitare". It must be what you're talking about. Only we played with two decks shuffled together. We had so much fun.

I remember jacks too, but I'm pretty sure they left the house after the first time my dad stepped on one. He was always throwing our toys away.

Sometime around the fifth or sixth grade, we had something called Chinese Jacks. I think that's what they were called. I LOVED them. They were super popular among my friends. They were small plastic rings of different colors. You could snap them together so you had about four rings around one. You could create your own color combinations too. You played with then just like regular Jacks only no ball, you just tossed one up then picked up the others. We played all the time, and we would trade colored rings with each other. It was great.

I also remember
pogo sticks
stilts
lemon twists
roller skates
hula hoops
bubbles
wiffle ball
playing in the creek
climbing trees
climbing up on my roof and throwing cherries
at the kid next door ( who was on his roof throwing small lemons).

I was never in the house, and didn't have a lot of adult supervision.

We seemed to jump rope endlessly. Great exercise, I'm sure! I perfected Double Dutch. A number of years ago a childhood friends and I had a great time recalling and writing down all our jump rope songs and chants--there were lots of them--and we found others doing the same online. Interesting how they varied by region.

I was in a dollar store on Saturday and I saw jacks and they brought back many memories. The ones I saw were not the same as we played with though. They looked flat on one side with a projection on the other side. The only game I remember was where you put your left cupped hand on the floor so you made a cave and they you had to push the jacks into it and I dont remember what it was called.

My family always played Solataire. We did play double with two decks and my mom was the queen of flying fingers. Sometimes we would play on Aces and other time draw a card for the middle of the table and play on tht. We would have tournaments with about 4 or 5 of us playing on eachother aces or whatever. I really miss those times!! Thanks for the memory .