Talk:List of children's games

Warball

Hi, I noticed that warball directs the reader to a page about a metal band.

It is not a children's game, but I'm not sure what warball is - it may or may not be one. Please change. Signed, An alert wiki-leecher.71.135.76.244 22:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I am looking for information about a game we played in the 40s and 50s that we called FLY or sometimes STICKS. We had about 6 or so sticks approximately 40 cms long that were placed in a line about 40 centimetres apart. We ran between the sticks from botom to top. When finished we we able to move one stick to the top to create a bigger space in the middle. The object of the game was to traverse the spaces without touching the sticks. It became harder each time a stick was removed.If you touched a stick with your feet , you were out.Thanks, Faye —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.66.229 (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Skelly

Hi, I was looking for the game of "skelly" we played it with bottle caps. We put melted wax into the bottle cap to give it more weight too. The object of the game was to shoot the cap with your pointer finger and thumb to each numbered box, I think it was 9 boxes, then to the middle for the win. You could knock your opponents cap out and they had to shoot from wherever the cap landed. I want to make a skelly board for my grandchildren to keep something of my past alive. Does anyone have the correct placement of the numbers, for the board. Thanks, and please add Skelly to your list of traditional children's games, it sure was a favorite of mine.....Carol---- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.189.99.115 (talk) 19:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

King's Base

(As a kid in Massachusetts, I loved playing this game with my cousins. I don't remember how we learned it, but I think it was originally British.)

King's Base is an outdoor tag-style game played by about a dozen children, typically boys. At the start of the game each boy chooses a recognizable home base, such as a tree or fence post. If a boy leaves base, he can be tagged and captured by any other boy who later leaves base (is "fresher"). Once a capture is made, both boys get a free walk back to the base of the captor. The captive them becomes the teammate of the captor. The game is over when all boys are on the same team, and the winner is the boy who has been on the team the longest.

While the game is mostly about running, a good bit of cunning is involved as well. Players need situational awareness of who is "fresher", and baiting opponents is an essential part of the game.

Variation: teammates on base can hold hands in a chain and extend the base by the principle of "electricity". This gives an advantage to larger teams and shortens the game. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.78.218.189 (talk) 01:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

"Slaps"

Slaps was a game that I and many other played in Elementary School especially, though it was used in feats of brute strength and will in the upper school years to prove "dominance" or just generally piss off the teachers. We affectionately called it 'slaps' - we called Red Hands 'pull-away-and-slap' or 'pull-away' in the rare occasions it was played - 'rare', of course, signifying that it was not played too often.

This is how it was played:

Two people would lock hands rather like as shown in this picture: http://www.local802afm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Hands-clasping-istock-2.jpg

The people'd be across from each other, or sitting next to each other but turned face to face. Like shown, we'd wrap our hand around the other's hand, with the thumb in between the other's index finger and thumb and the other four fingers clutching the edge of the other side. For best results, the hands are about the same size and don't cover up too much of the dorsal side of the other's hand, because you need to need enough room to (funnily enough) slap. There are other ways you can lock hands, but this is the one we typically used as we found it easiest to uncover the back of the hand in this position.

We used the back of the hand because it was decently sensitive and wasn't in a place where awkward bruises or sores would attract unwanted attention. There were variants, including slapping the underbelly of the forearm, the palm, and the face - but they were either deemed not painful enough or they'd attract unwanted attention, as mentioned before.

In addition, locking hands and then slapping with the other one was a good way to make it harder. All you can really do while having your hands intertwined is to apply pressure to your opponent's hand; you can't recoil or shake it off, and the combination of squeezing the other's hand (both for causing them more pain and relieving yours) and slapping was found to be extremely effective.

I'm sure you've figured out the actual game by now: You simply take turns slapping each other's hand. Unlike arm wrestling, where the strongest always wins, this involves stamina and pain tolerance. It's kind of like walking barefoot on asphalt on a sunny day; you feel it stinging . . . gets hotter . . . it burns, but you grit your teeth and bear it . . . your feet feel like they're on fire . . . and then you jump up, yelp, and run over to the nearest towel/shadow/moist grass/water to get your feet off the ground and wait for the stinging to wear off.

There were variants; in some games you'd only lose if you took your hand out or said "stop", more commonly, you couldn't make a sound at all. The latter was especially useful in avoiding authority figures - for some reason, the adults wouldn't let us voluntarily inflict pain upon each other.

Most of the time, people with the same dominant hand would play, because you could either lock right-hand-with-right-hand or left-hand-with-left-hand. Either way, it was still fairly even - of course, one will always be able to slap harder, but you're either both using the dominant hand or both using the lesser hand. If you a right-handed person played with a left-handed person, it would be unfairly unbalanced. In a case of locking the right hands, the left-handed person would win and vice-versa.

I don't know if this was a local thing or not, but I don't think it is - I moved around a few times as a child; there were at least a few kids each in Omaha, Charlotte, and Phoenix who knew how to play right off the bat. I never heard it referred to as anything but 'slaps', though it is worth noting that the number of kids recognizing the game were in the minority.

Secondly - I went through all the games. If I knew it by a different name, yet it was never mentioned in the article, I'll list it here; I won't pretend to be smart about Wikipedia, and I like to avoid editing - I don't do a very good job of it.

British bulldogs - we called it "Octopus's Garden"; this is similar to the "octopus" mentioned on the article. -Variants of Tag - we called "Octopus Tag" "Octopus's Garden" as well. We considered these variants of the same game; they were often played in different way, especially depending on location. "Octopus Tag" was played in cul-de-sacs; one gym teacher called a version "line tag" because the taggers were stuck on the half-court line on a marking of basketball lines on the floor of the gym; "Red Rover" was sometimes played in the sense of "Red Rover, send people who are -category- over!" - this was usually moderated to generalities and/or played with a large numbers of players, because people would get smart and call out "wearing a red shirt with a pony on it with a blue knee-length skirt" and zero-in on single players like that. Also, "Sharks and Minnows" was used in any occasion when there was an "infected" group and "uninfected" group. Typically, there would be a defined space and some hiding places or rest/vantage points (exempli gratia sharks can't access playground equipment but they can still tag you if you're on a piece, so people would crowd at the top of the slide . . .)

Hope I didn't bore you. Just something to think about.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.99.140.120 (talk) 21:19, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Yahtzee Jr.

Why is this commercial branded game listed here? Surely that's inappropriate, and only encourages every single commercial board game to be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.6.145 (talk) 11:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Clothing

Mother may I put on some clothing 2601:2C2:A80:6380:89DF:6F85:8FDB:E4CA (talk) 19:33, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Kerby

The Kerby ball game definitely deserves an article, its been played by British children since the late 1900s and the Kerby Championship sees around 20,000 participants annually. Basically two people stand either side of a road and take it in turns trying to throw a ball at their opponents curb. There are minor regional variants for how you score points, but it boils down to being awarded points for how far the ball bounces back and whether you catch it. There is a lot of information in Google. 81.78.71.175 (talk) 23:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

"Children's games" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Children's games has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 5 § Children's games until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 19:23, 5 August 2024 (UTC)