I grew up in the city, and my friends and I played outside all the time. We did physical thingsendless games of jump rope, hopscotch, ball playing. And we rode our bikes all the time.

When the girls would get together at one of our houses, we'd play cards or other games, or just talk. No computers, no MySpace, no texting, no iPods. We had television, but didn't watch it all that much.

Outside - riding my bike! I lived on a highway about ½ mile from town and was allowed to ride into town and ride around with friends all day.

Inside - reading, board games and cards.

I visited with my friends often and they stayed at my house alot too.

Played cowboys and indians, dressup with my dolls sometimes as only boys in the neighborhood. Played sword fight with the long icycles hanging from the roof. Got on the roof and slid down on the snow and flew off into a snowdrift. Threw rotten tomatoes at the boys. Ice skated and had snowball fights and made angels in the snow and built snow forts.
I had a lot of fun growing up and nothing fancy as we didn't have much material wise, just a lot of love and laughter.
Lynn

We spent most of our time outside. I grew up in a neighborhood of boys that just happened to be my age. We played a lot of ball, rode bikes (I still have some scars from that) and we played with little plastic cowboys and horses and Indians. What I wouldn't give to have those now! I do have a nice tea set that is still in the original box I had as a kid. It's in pristine condition b/c I was such a tomboy I don't remember ever playing w/ it. We had a great time and at Halloween roamed the entire neighborhood w/o our parents being the least concerned. It was a good time. I don't remember any of the kids I went to school with being overweight. Can't say that now!

Roller skated, and rode bikes. Read. Went to the local swimming hole called Pleasure Lakes. Rumor is, it was a nudist camp at one time in the 20's or 30's. Just an old sand pit lake where I helped give swimming lessons when I was about 14.
Leslie

My cousin and I dressed up in our mom's old clothes (waaay past the age when we were little). We'd walk down the highway to each other's houses and then run and get in the ditch when a car came by.

We dug in the dirt, used a garden hoe and a water hose and made roads and lakes to drive our cars and trucks on and around.

We spoke only PigLatin when the Avon Lady came. We hoped that she would think that we were from a foreign country. (She probably thought that we were from a foreign PLANET! LOL)

We danced the Charleston on top of the lumber pile.

We scared my Grandma going to the toilet....

We ate the lunchmeat out of her brother's sandwiches to surprise him. (It was her job to fix him some lunch when he came in from the field.)

We smoked cornsilk cigarettes and I singed my eyelashes on the cookstove lighting one. Wondered how Mama knew that I'd been smokin'! LOL

We'd lay out in the sun and tan for 8-9 hours a day. (Skin cancer surgery twice and she's had it, also.)

Could you tell that we were home alone??? LOL

Oh boy, I did lots! Played hopscotch, hide & seek, skipping, red rover, spotlight and war with my brothers, sisters and kids from the street. Played tennis in the street, rode bike up and down the street (when the old man up the street who drove home drunk every afternoon came by we'd yell out that he was coming and get out of the street, then when he was gone we knew it was safe to play in the street again, LOL). We played in my parent's camper, slept out there all night with the electricity from the house hooked up to it. Popped popcorn in the house and brought it out, listened to the radio and read my older sister's Teen magazines. We played with our dolls and hung their clothes on the clothesline. We played restaurant and made french fries out of twigs and plates out of rhubarb leaves. I read a lot, lid out in the sun on a blanket to get a tan, ran through the sprinkler, played croquet and in the winter we made snow men, went sliding on the big hill behind our house and ate icicles from the eave of the house. I was always outside as a kid.

I did a lot of bike riding, played with Barbie dolls. When my parents had friends over we'd make them popcorn and slip a 'bill' into the bowl. They never paid us though! lol

We roamed the country side... which now is not possible, cause it is all built over. We lived at the edge of town, and played cowboys and indians, and bonanza, and hide and seek, plus built "shelters", club houses etc.

I am sure, we were a menance to the local farmers. :)

Moni

Outside we roamed a lot, around our small town and the woods, from neighbor to neighbor. We climbed trees, road bikes, and chased down the ice cream truck. We went to the city pool a lot.

In winter we'd go sledding and dig forts in snow drifts, lick icicles. On snow days DB and I had board game marathons, winner choosing the next game.

There are differences for my kids. They are suburban kids, not small town kids. There is more asphalt than grass and no woods to explore. They don't roam nearly as far from home as I did as a kid. They spend a lot of time outside, but it's in our backyard or on the cul-de-sac playing a ball game of some sort or on wheels of some sort. The go to the community park and play more ball games with neighbor kids. They still chase down the ice cream truck, and we go to the pool almost every day in summer. Inside, they play more computer games than board games. But they play more traditional stuff too. Some of their games and toys are not only like the ones we played with, the ARE the ones DH or I played with. LOL.

The biggest difference is closeness to family. I grew up close to extended family. Their cousins are 400-500 miles away. Plus, I had nearly 17 cousins and played with all of them. They have 4, and barely know them. And they don't play in the snow. LOL. We have plenty of great hills for sledding, but they do what we call "Georgia sledding," a sheet of cardboard down a grassy slope. But it's the lack of extended family I miss for them more than anyting else.

As a kid, we also were outside all the time riding our bikes, playing in the open fields nearby, touch football, stickball, hide and seek ( couldn't understand then why the neighbors got upset when we hid in their shrubs). It was hard to get us inside.

TV time was Saturday morning cartoons and the family watching shows together. Now, there are shows I miss since I don't want my GD watching them.

When we did, we played cards a lot, always had a jigsaw puzzle going in the rec room (rec room...don't hear that term anymore). My sister and I each had a doll but dolls weren't a priority with me. Our cousins weren't in town but close by. For years, spring and summer Sunday afternoons were spent at Nomahegan Park. We'd be there as soon as we changed out of our church clothes til the sun went down. With all my cousins, aunts and uncles, we had some terrific ballgames. I loved climbing the trees in that park.

I realize that now, in Texas, it does get too hot to just spend the whole day outside sometimes but it was a more innocent time in the 50s growing up. No one locked their doors, at least til someone broke in the Glowinski's door.
My girls grew up in a time when we were fingerprinting our children, warning them about strangers, etc. They had a Nintendo but we didn't keep up getting the newer models.

We're back to playing cards and board games, especially when my oldest DD and her BF come over. I enjoy my PC games but enjoy the games we play together so much more.

We were never in the house for one thing. We were outside from morning until the street lights came on or maybe even later - even in the winter.

I don't see a lot of kids playing together so much anymore. I grew up with a lot of kids in my neighbourhood and we played group games like Hide and Seek, Mother May I, Red Light Green Light, Simon Says, etc. We made leaf houses in the fall and raked all the leaves into squares to form rooms and spent hours in them playing house. We played baseball and touch football on the empty lot next door.

We skipped, played hopscotch, rode our bikes, swam at St. Rose beach. We went to the end of the street and played in the bush and collected tadpoles and frogs at the three ponds and then picked wild strawberries and blackberries and green apples when we were hungry and not ready to go home yet.

We had Kool-Aid and candy stands every summer. My friends and I made clothesline tents out of whatever sheets and blankets we could find and spent most summer nights sleeping in them.

We roller skated 3 times a week if not more at the arena and ice skated in the winter in backyard ice rinks or at the arena. I would walk the 4 blocks to the arena with my skates on and my brother would tighten the laces for me when I got there. We were always active.

My friends and I had great imaginations. We played with dolls until we were 16 years old. Our Barbies were Playboy bunnies and we put cotton balls on their bathing suits for tails.

We played board games and card games and played with dinky toys in the sand. We burned things with my Dad's big magnifying lens. We made butterfly catchers using our Mom's chiffon scarves attached to sticks and would go into he fields. We dressed up in our sister's prom dresses and pretended we were princesses.

When we wanted to play with someone we didn't pick up the telephone to call them, we went to their back door and sang - we sang their name and "would you like to come out and play with me" Nobody knocked on doors. LOL I don't know if I could sing at anyone's door now.

My Dad built me a huge wooden swing set out in the backyard with one swing being big enough for 2. We rode bikes to the next town just to get a popsicle.

We had 7 kids in this house. There wouldn't have been room for us to play in the house because we didn't have a family room. We had to play outside and it didn't bother us. We came in when it rained or went to a friend's house or when we needed a change of mittens. We ate lunch and supper and then back outside we would go.

We only watched tv at night and Saturday mornings - never during the day unless we were home sick from school and then watched the Soaps with my Mom.

I would take the bus downtown to visit my Grandma when I was 7 years old. I started to babysit the kid across the street when I was 7 years old. I took the bus without an adult to Toronto and then transfer to another bus to Aurora with a toddler when I was 12 years old.

Our parents never knew where we were. We didn't have to tell them where we were going or telephone when we got there. We didn't worry about being kidnapped or strangers talking to us. Life was easier.

We had more freedom, we felt more safe, we used our imaginations and we were active every day. Not so much with our kids in this day and age.

Anne

Playing hide'n seek in the neighborhood.
Catching lighning bugs!
Hopscotch on front sidewalk.

These posts are making me long for the good old days. I did a lot of the things above. Summer was just the best. We made hollyhock dolls, roads and ponds like ya ya in which we'd transplant weeds all around for "ambience". Rainy days were for reading and playing in the attic, which was a pretty scary place to me.

When I was in 7th through 9th grade a bunch of us girls would ride our bikes 5 miles out to my grandparents farm. There was a wonderful creek and woods to play in. We'd stop at the covered bridge to rest and eat half our lunch. We'd each take our own brown bag lunch and a Pepsi, which we kept cold in the creek. Gratefully, somebody always remembered the church key.

My grandparents also owned an old canning factory with little cabins where the migrant workers stayed. One year we decided to make one of them into a club house. That lasted about two weekends before we ran into a swarm of "killer bees". After we got our licenses, we would still go out occasionally just to recapture that fun, only we'd take more elaborate food (leftover pizza and brownies from a slumber party the night before) and get a watermelon (sometimes illegally) and put it in the creek for dessert.

Wish every kid could grow up like all us who've posted so far. Sure is a different world now.