Monday, March 17, 2008

RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT

Do you remember playing "Red Light, Green Light" in the schoolyard during recess? How about "Mother, May I?", "What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf?", or "Simon Says"?

When I was young, we didn't have a lot of expensive playground equipment like many schools today. Recess was a time for "Tag", "Red Rover", "Hopscotch", races, and jump roping, not to mention all of the clapping games! We got creative, and some of my best early memories are those of the playground. When Tornado started to school, all of those memories came flooding back to me. Though I could not remember a lot of the rules or lyrics to the games, it just so happened to be the time of Google! Lucky me!!! I won't say it was a complete and total breeze to find what we were looking for back then, but it wasn't really that hard either. After a few clicks, we had several sites giving us all the information we could want for many of those old games!

Today was the first day of Spring Break for Tornado and Twister, and it was a gorgeous day! With the threat of rain and cooler temperatures tomorrow, we played outside for hours! We had so much fun playing these games from my childhood. Of course, I was always "It" ~ whether "It" was "Simon", "Mr. Wolf", or the "Traffic Cop".
We were even inspired to make up new games with math facts and spelling words, too! The kids laughed and giggled and screamed and jumped and practiced schoolwork without even realizing it...we had the best time!

What games do you remember from childhood? I'd love to hear from you in the comment section!

Ann Kroeker is hosting "Monday FunDay" ~ "a carnival dedicated to swapping simple, amusing – maybe even silly – everyday ways you enjoy good, clean fun" ~ over at her blog. We really had a "Monday FunDay" playing these silly games today! Try them sometime, and see for yourself!

You can find other fun ideas over at Ann's blog,

and y'all know...we can all use a little fun now and then ~ especially on Mondays!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, you just opened up a flood of memories! Wow, I love this so much...now I've got to jot down all the ones I loved. You mentioned several, of course, like Red Light/Green Light and Red Rover. Oh, man, did I love Red Rover. The weather you just described seems to have rolled into our part of the country. I'll have to see what I can Google and come up with from my childhood to fill the rainy afternoon with. Thanks for this fabulous reminder of how to use our high-tech search engines for low-tech fun!

Anonymous said...

Hey girl,

My mom taught our kids a game this weekend she played when she was a kid. It is called 'Annie Over'. Let me know if you want the rules...

Great idea. I loved those games when I was a kid too.

love,
steph