From “Tip the Can” to “Connect 4”, show your kids how you and your pals entertained yourselves from morning ’til night – without a screen in sight
Did your parents love nothing more than telling you about how things were better ‘back in their day’ and that they didn’t need much to have fun?
While you may have rolled your eyes at the time, you now find yourself doing the same – wistfully reminiscing about how you and your friends would stay out all day without a care in the world, only gracing your doorstep for the occasional pitstop aka. to refuel and use the bathroom.
If you feel like your child is spending too much time on devices or staring at screens, take them on a trip down memory lane and teach them some of the games you and your friends played to pass those halcyon days of summer!
1. Tip the Can
Usually centred around a telephone poll, tree or other large object that is the ‘can’, this game was a staple of every neighbourhood in the 80s and 90s.
How to play: One person is ‘it’ and they have to cover their eyes and counts to 20 while the rest of the players hide in various locations in the vicinity. When each person is discovered by the catcher, they go to ‘jail’ unless one person is quick enough to ‘tip the can’ and free everyone without being caught.
2. Kerbs
This was a game you could practice and get really good at if you were so inclined. It was our Wimbledon.
How to play: Different estates had different rules but in essence, it involves two people throwing a ball across the road from each other trying to hit the kerb on the other side so that it would bounce back to them. If they succeed, they get to go halfway closer to the kerb and do it again. If they miss they have to run back as quickly as possible before the other person hits them with the ball, stealing all their points.
The person who gets the most ‘kerbs’ wins the game. Unless someone gets a ‘double kerb’ – an extremely rare, almost miraculous event where the ball bounces off both kerbs from one throw. In that instance, that person is immediately crowned the winner of the game.
3. Red Rover
This game requires at least six people so you can have three on each team. There are two captains and they take turns picking who is on their team.
How to play: Each team stands a few metres apart with their hands held tightly together. After deciding who goes first, someone from the opposite team calls, ‘Red rover, red rover, we call over XXX’ and whoever they call has to try to run through their hands. If they succeed in breaking the chain, they get to bring back one of the team to their own group, making it stronger. If they fail, they join the team they tried to beat.
This is a game of strategy and teamwork and ends when there is only one person left on the losing team.
4. Stuck in the Mud
This is a game of chasing with a twist.
How to play: If the chaser catches you, you have to freeze exactly where you are while the game continues around you. The only way back into the game is to get someone to crawl under your legs without getting themselves caught – once they’re out the other side you’re free to run and avoid capture again. Absolute bedlam.
5. Musical Chairs
Has a child’s birthday party even taken place if it doesn’t involve a game of Musical Chairs that ends in tears?
How to play: This game requires a minimum of about six children and five chairs – however many children there are, there needs to be one less chair. An independent adjudicator, usually a parent or impartial older sibling, plays music as the children traipse around the chairs, eyeing each other competitively.
When the music stops, they must immediately battle to get one of the chairs. Whoever is left standing is ‘out’. They’re probably also upset and require some sort of treat to sit down and let the game continue. Many have asked for a stewards enquiry.
Best played outdoors, away from sharp edges and breakable ornaments, this can also be done indoors if required.s
Board games
However, as we’re all painfully aware, it’s not always possible to play outside during the summer. Wind, rain and even hailstones are all part and parcel of the Irish summer and the sooner we all make our peace with that, the better.
With that in mind, why not introduce your children to some of the classic board games of your childhood that are gathering dust in the attic? Here are our favourites:
6. Cluedo
7. The Game of Life
8. Discovering Ireland
9. Connect 4
10. Guess Who?
