ecobites.com

Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

But when half the Eco Kids at school turned up with marbles on the same day, then the season had begun and a handful of marbles became equivalent to a palmful of diamonds.

Ordinary marbles either clear glass with a coloured centre or were marbled, usually white and one colour. A multi coloured one would be a prized possession. But the stakes were high for the rare types such as 'mexies', those with a centre, 'blood suckers' white with a blaze of red that looked like blood (hence the name) and the extra special find were roadside reflectors. These use to send the kids in to a swapping frenzy . A mexie and bloodsuckers were worth several marbles in a swap with the prized reflectors getting a premium if one was lucky enough to get a swap.

Marbles were played along the channel or up against the wall with a big ball bearing (steely) or a big glass marble (gullier or tomballer) used to hit the smaller ones. Not so nimble players spent their meagre pocket money or earnings from doing chores to buy more supplies from the shopkeepers (who somehow were also in the know about the mystery of the game season).

To get through all the game seasons and participate in at least four - fifths of the action, all you needed was this:

Red flowerpot shards or some chalky stones
One or more smooth, flat stones
1.5 m (5 ft) of strong rope
One ball of thin strong string (try saying thin strong string 20 times without stumbling).
Two empty steel cans of identical size
Old bicycle wheel or iron hoop
Three strong straight sticks 30-40 cm (12 - 14 in) long (try saying three strong straight sticks 30 times without tripping).
Some lengths of split bamboo or thin wood
A few metres of strong coloured paper or cloth
Large elastic bands that are tied in a loop and stretched between two players' legs.
Two spinning tops
Three small rubber balls
A cloth bag / tin / bottle with marbles

With a little foresight you could get the few items which cost money on birthdays or from the good Saint Nicholas (Santa Clause/Father Christmas to you) by hinting and leaving notes about saying 'One yellow spinning top - - urgent!', or by telling your family that you thought three rubber balls were too much to ask for as a present, but that a skipping rope with real wooden handles would be great too.The rest of the list was a matter of saving shards, a wheel, elastic, sticks and sometimes the string you could find yourself.

Now let's see what you can do with these very useful materials.

1. The shards or chalky stones are used to draw the great figures of squares and rectangles for a classic game of hopscotch. Draw it on a paved or bitumenised area - - the rain will wash it clean later. Hopping on one foot, you kick the flat stone from block to block towards the end and back again. If you miss or overshoot a block, the next player has a go while you wait for your next turn. It takes skill and the noses of shoes!

Can also hop one or two-legged across the figures (1,1,1,2,1,2,1,2,) making a half-circle jump at the turning point. The art is not to step on any lines and to give a really elegant performance.

Draw a series of blocks and play the travel game. Call out ' brother ', (or sister) I want to travel far! '. Bother or sister asks ' Where to ? '. Reply - ' To Timbuktu ', this has three syllables, so three hops after brother or sister shouts ' Farewell ' or ' have a good trip '. Other players try to find longer place names for more hops. Some get to home base quicker that way, while others hop happily on two syllable stopovers. Eco kids can invent more games to play in these blocks. All that is required is a play area of earth, draw the blocks with a stick.

2. Rope skipping is accompanied by many rhythmical songs. Every player takes a turn to show skill, then the whole group decides on a popular skipping song and they all skip and sing together, which is a fantastic thing to see and hear. When we were children, boys missed out on this marvellous game, but in these days of equality they are allowed to take part.

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This is another one for the girls (although the boys today, would be quite welcome to join in). We played it at the top of the street. Named - "I sent a letter to my mother".  A group of girls sit down in a circle some distance apart, the girl who was on,  picks up a bit of rubbish from the ground (now known as "the letter") and ran around the outside of the group as everyone sitting down closed their eyes and sang :

I sent a letter to my mother on the way I dropped it (the girl who is on drops the letter behind one of the girls) someone must of picked it up and put it in their poc.......ket

On finishing the song the girls sitting down all look behind them whoever has the letter picks it up and tries to catch the person who is on before they get back to the vacated seat. If the person who is on gets to the seat she gets to be on again, if she gets caught then the other person has a go at dropping off the letter.

3. Can clogs are fun. Turn two identical steel cans upside down, make holes on opposite sides just under the bottom and put string through them, knotting the ends at a height where your hands hold the loops with ease when you stand on the cans. Off you go! The rules were - no can-clogging allowed before 9 a.m. or after 7 p.m., for the noise would wake a sleeping elephant!

4. An old bicycle wheel without a tyre makes a fine hoop. (Can pick these up at recycle areas at the local dump). It is amazing how far we used to run pushing an old bicycle wheel with a piece of stick. The stick was used to beat the wheel along and used to guide it around corners. The wheels were usually just the outer ring with hub and spokes removed. However if you were lucky enough to get a tank with all the trimmings, everyone got out of your way. With the full wheel it was like the chariot race in Ben Hur. Scraped and greasy legs were the order of the day.
Take up a strong stick of 30 - 40 cm, steady the wheel, hit it in the desired direction (away from small kids, pets, pots and low windows please) and run along with it. If you think there can't be much fun in running after an old wheel, you obviously have no idea of the hoop mind. Hoops have minds of their own and change course, collapse, or even turn back when it suits them and your stick has to keep them on the straight and narrow.

5. The kite-flying season is in more than one way the highlight of the summer season. The delights of making and decorating your kite with bamboo and a large square of coloured paper can be enjoyed on a rainy or windy day, when playing outside is not on. Take a stick of 30 - 40 cm which you can hold with both hands, rewind the ball of string onto, but cut off a few metres and put aside for other games. When the weather turns nice, with just a light breeze, wet your finger to see what direction the wind is coming from, check what obstacles there are in the opposite direction (poles, trees, towers or tall people), pick your runway and taxi along until your kite is taken up by the wind. It will tug at the string which you slowly release until the kite soars high up and the hum of the wind vibrates through the string into your hands and through your whole body.

6. Spinning tops can be made by your nearest friendly wood whittler or carver to help you make some and teach you to do it. The wood must be of the type that doesn't split easily, because a round-headed nail must be driven the tip on which it spins. They used to put the nail into a square block of wood and then carve the top from that. There were two types: the spinning top (onion shape) and the whipping top (mushroom shape).

To spin the spinning top, wind about 1.5 m (5 ft) of string tightly in neat coils around the top from tip to the bulge. Hold the end of the string tightly between your fingers, the top in the palm of hand, strike a throwing pose and hurl the top  down at a hard piece of ground, pulling back the unwinding string. Watch the top spin until it slows down and topples. To make the spin more exciting, draw coloured stripes or push a gold drawing pin in the top. Spinning tops simultaneously with several other players is terrific fun. Spinning tops is an ancient art for very precise, patient, elastic and concentrating people!

For the whipping top, make a whip from the last strong stick of 30 - 40 cm (find out which length gives the best balance) and 60 cm (2 ft) of string. Wind the string around the stem of the top until it lies against the stick. Bend down on a hard surface, steady the top and pull away whip and string with a backward pull, leaving the top spinning. Whip the top (it may help as you do so) and see how long the top can keep spinning. Have players keep each other's scores. If you want to improve endurance record in top spinning.

7. Three small rubber balls are the minimum for juggling against a wall or up in the air. Learn to catch one ball first, then learn to throw up a second ball just before catching the first one, when you are good at that,  try three. Experts go on to four, five and six balls. Choose small light rubber balls that bounce well. Half the success in the juggling ball game is in the balls.

Tennis balls will do for this one as well - two tennis balls and a wall (a porch was best) and juggled or threw the balls whilst singing a rhyme. 
Another girls ball game we played where the ball is put in the toe of a stocking and the girl stands with her back against the wall and swings the ball from left to right bouncing it off the wall saying a rhyme and up and down between her legs and over her head.

8. Elastics was another great girls game from yesteryear. Large elastic bands that are tied in a loop and stretched between two players' legs.
Where one person stood at each end with the elastic around their ankles forming a rectangle and we would take it in turns to jump over them changing England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, inside, outside, stamp on the rails..then raise them higher and higher until it was impossible.

These eight games were low budget entertainment, and when you take care to play them only in their own season, you never tired of them.

If you have a handy woodworker in the family you may perhaps be able to participate in the stilt-walking season.
Stilts are made of 50 x 50 mm (2 x 2 in) wood with several steps on the sides to stand on. All the edges have to be sanded down and smoothed so that you don't end up with splinters and cuts. Stilts originated in marshy areas, before the invention of rubber boots. Begin on the bottom steps and exercise in an open space, preferably soft or grassed in case you take a tumble. Stilt walking gives you a whole new view of life!

Games for which you don't need anything at all are 'hide and seek', 'catchy', and 'count and run' games: the rules are made by any groups of Eco kids who want to play.

Some countries are lucky to have the skating seasons. Roller skating on warm summer evenings and ice skating, of course, in winter. Although both types of skates are expensive, families managed to get inexpensive rollers and second-hand irons for winter.

Only some games were dictated by the weather, like ice skating and kite flying. Nature helped and It seemed to be a deeply mysterious, unwritten law that told children everywhere that it was time to change over. Whatever the secret was,or is, we certainly never became bored with any game.

Yesteryear memories....Hide and Seek, Hopscotch, Donkey, Skipping, Handstands, Elastics, Knuckles, Kick the Can, Red Rover, Rounders, Stuck in the Mud, Roly Poly, Hula Hoops. Jumping the stream and laughing at the one who fell in. Building a swing from a tyre or a branch and a piece of rope tied to a tree, building tree-houses. Another great large group game was sardines. It's like hide and seek in reverse. At the beginning, only one person goes and hides while the rest of the group close their eyes. The idea is that if you find the person hiding, you must jump in or lie down beside them without anyone else noticing, then someone else will come along and jump in with the two of you etc., until there is only one person left with the gang of you cramped in a tiny corner. Lot's of fun! Tennis (with wooden rackets) on the road with chalk outlines, the smell of the sun beating down on the tarmac and fresh cut grass. Playing with your siblings and friends until your Mum had to come and get you for dinner, walking to school, no matter what the weather, and having fun with games for the season.