Playground Fun!

[Unknown Entity]

I walk past my old primary school everyday on the way into college, and I am shocked by how much a place could change in just 5 years. It was rather large, with a shelter and football pitch at one end, and a MASSIVE plain, boring, flat ground area with a few benches. In my last year there, the roof playground opened for the year 5's and 6's to play in. At the time, I was only in year 6, so I didn't even get to have my fun there for very long. It was just another footie pitch, with... you guessed it, a few benches.

Now... The main playground has one, MASSIVE wooden adventure, climbing frame thingy, a football pitch with proper goals, and a 4 metre high fence around it! Its not fair! For obvious reasons, I can't see the roof playground from the ground, but judging by the sound of the amount of screaming and laughing I can hear coming from there, thats changed too.

Back in the day (Oh gawd, I feel old... ^_^;, all I had for entertainment was a tennis ball, the one or two mate I did have back then and a wall. We spent pretty much all lunch time playing "Pat Ball" against the wall, or chucking from one end of the play ground to the other. The boys wouldn't let girls play football, and when they did, they went out of their way t make sure we got a serious beating. -_-#

When the roof play ground opened, it was the same, except you couldn't really play "Pat Ball" because of the really low net over the top to stop footballs going over. So... we sat in the shelter bit reading. Or... talking. Every now and then, to the dinner ladies disapproval, we would have a water fight. This often endded up with us getting in one hell of a lot of trouble, but hey, it was kinda fun!

We also made up many games, one called "Freedom". It was like a rip off of "Had!", but with a few extra... rules. It included a bench for those wondering. Me and my friend Jodie, who were at the time major Harry Potter fans set up a club... (Oh gawd, now I feel like a nerd...).

Of course, at my school, the so called "CofE" school, there was also tons of bullies. Fun was limited if you had your stuff stolen, or if you were pushed out of every game for being different.

The playground at Haggerston (my secondary school) was also pretty large. And plain, but by that age, everyone had grown out of playing the games we used to play and stuff. Pretty much every lunch time was sitting around on the grass laughing, eatting, and reading, and... getting on with studies. "Pat Ball" turned into "21 Dares" or one or two card games.

So yeah, that sums up what it was like in my playground, and what it is like now (just not in that order). So, what was your playground like back in the day? If you're still in lower school, could remind us of what it was like?

Wow... its long... Sorwy...

[Halie]

I totally get what you mean! When I was at Monnow Junior School, there was nothing in our playground. And I mean, nothing. There were little hop-scotches painted here and there. But lets be fair, nobody ever played on them >.>

And now, they've got bloody huge coloured pencils sticking out of the ground! Literally. There are like ten of them scattered across the yard. There's benches there now, and Snakes and Ladders stuff painted on the floor. It's just not fair haha.

We don't have a playground at my High School, haha. Everybody goes in the corridoors or out for lunch/break. S'okay, though. We're a bit too old for a playground . Still... we don't get to unleash our inner kiddies. *Shniffles*.

[Aerif]

It's strange to see you use some of the terms that we used to use in Primary School, heh, I'm probably wrong but I've never heard another person outside of Port Glasgow use the term 'Play piece'.

I remember that our playground was all gravel, there were two levels to it though, upstairs was where everybody in Primary 2 and below were restricted and Primary 3 and above had to play in the main playground.

Apart from gravel, there was a wall that surrounded the perimeter of the playground, and a grassy field outside of it that we were forbidden to enter. Ever. (Though that was because there were condoms, needles and empty bottles of Buckfast littering it).

There were also yellow lines painted on the playground that were used for Cycling Proficiency Tests (Teaching kids how to ride bikes on the road and turn signals and stuff), which we used for an innovative new game called 'Line Tag(/tig)', in which you were only allowed to stay on the yellow lines... The problem was that lines weren't connected and many came to dead ends.

I also remember that football was often banned because the boys purposefully tried to whack anyone who wasn't playing in the face. I may have taken many trips to the school nurse because of this... Though I can't remember (It could be amnesia!)

When it snowed though, there would be no inter-pupil snowball fights, instead, everybody would grab a handful of snow and run to the wall were we could see through the metal fence, the other school (there was a Catholic vs. Non-Denominational rivarly between our primary schools) and throw snowballs at the other schools, of course it always escalated and people started throwing rocks, and violent stuff happened etc.

I remember that you NEVER heard anyone swear in our Primary school, I didn't know any swear words until I was in Primary 7. Nowadays there is a lot of swearing heard when passing our supposedly catholic Primary school.

I miss primary school

[Chez Daja]

Oh, bloody Hell, I'm not sure I can remember back that far. It was a good thirteen years now.

But from what my mind does remember, there was a gigantic concrete area, and there were two areas for trees. I think I remember accidentally touching a red berry and crying because I thought I was poisoned. I would've been about five at that time, though.

There was a big jungle gym, which, strangely, nobody ever watched us playing on, especially since there were some boys were pretty malicious. None of them were ever nasty to me.

I do remember this boy approaching me and asking if I was a vegetarian. When I looked up at him, he said in a very upset voice "oh... you are, aren't you?" I hadn't known what a vegetarian was at the time -- again, being about five or six years old with meat-eating parents.

Which brings me back to the boys that used to fancy me. My first crush was on this boy named Andrew. Dirty-blonde-light brown hair with chubby cheeks. I remember him well for some reason. There were about four throughout those couple of years who fancied me; I don't know why all of the kids claimed to love each other. I did crush on that boy, but I never thought anything of it, haha. When I think back, all the boys in school were saddo's. I swear I remember this boy asking this girl to be his lady. My God. This countries' ****ed.

It's very tough for me to remember back that far, but I do remember sobbing when I'd been tripped over by another child nto the concrete and scraped my face, knees, arms and broken my glasses. The teachers hadn't contacted my mother at all, and when she came to collect me, she went apeshit and was very close to slapping my current teacher. Good times.

[Unknown Entity]

But I can't remember A) what the word was for a rainy day playtime...

We called it Wet Break. What usually happened at my school was that the years got split up and sent to one of the two assembly halls, and we watched a film on a tiny tele. Most of it was crappy cartoons, and the popular kids always got to pick what film the rest of us had to watch. Sometimes though, we got sent back to the class room, and had "Golden Time" were we could do whatever the fudge we wanted. Just not muck about with the chalk, board or board pens, get all the games out, play footie or Pat Ball, and certainly not allowed to play Had. -_-

So, you see, this makes remembering playtime all the more fun, because we were a ****ed up collection of children. A lot of our playtime games involved pretending to be adults: we had mock weddings, mock births (those are some of my most traumatic memories to date), mock kareoke...oh, TV shows. We had about ten pretend TV shows. I remember doing a news show with someone who is now Gollum from LOTR and a heavily suspected future paedo, and a variety show with a girl who is now a severe drug addict awaiting imprisonment for assault and vandalism.

Yeah, we had that too! OMG, I remember when this boy called Nana and this girl called Hanna got married in the Shelter. It was quite funny. Chucking leaves at them when came out "married" lol. We even managed to get the cooks to sneak out a few little muffins for the so-called party.

They got a divorce the next day.

We didn't do the whole pretending to have a baby thing - at least, I don't think they were pretending living in Hackney and all - but we did something else... We brought in our favourite teddy, and pretended it was our pet. Me and Jodie lol... She had this cute little fluffy puppy with really long years. I brought in my little "Courage" dog. The money I spent on Courage went towards a charity which was helping out victims in 9/11, and he has always been my favourite toy dog. I'll post a pic of him once I sort out my phone virus and stuff. <3

EDIT:

You couldn't swear either. Well, duh. You got sent to the Head if you just mumbled the word "sh*t" in the loo's lol.

Another word you got seriously told off for saying was "sex". I remember if someone said "sex", everyone would be like: "Ew, zomg, you're gross!" Now, if someone says it, its just... a damn word. I remember this time, someone had wrote sex in capital letters on an outside chalk board, and the Head kept us all behind after school to find out whodunit. That sucked, especially when he said we'd never have another lunch break until someone owned up to it.

[Sinister]

My school had a castle! ^^ But I only attended said school for a short time before being moved to a Catholic Private school with a fort, from which I fell off of breaking an arm and knocking the wind out of me. Also the horrors of the jungle gym and the vomit-inducing merry-go-round. After that I became home-schooled with no playground at all.

So beyond that... Great Playground gear is not all it's cracked up to be.

To be honest, the most fun I got out of recess was dodgeball and soccer. =/ Both of which, I was consistently brilliant at...

[winterborn86]

My old school was kinda crappy aswell, we had the usual hop scotches painted on the ground, a few plastic skipping ropes that were always tangled up and some hand sized bean bags, what the hell was that all out, what on earth am i supposed to do with a freaking bean bag, we weren't allowed to throw them at each other cos they were a little on the hard side. The best thing about my play ground was the fact that there was a rather big wood surrounding it, it was out of bounds tho cos some freaking man was living in there, seriously we all saw him getting arrested whilst we were in assembly, after that everyone kept going in and then we got detention for it, that was the only fun thing about our playground, unless you liked to play manhunt or IT.

[Furore]

Primary school... I remember there was a large paddock with some concrete tubes you could muck around in, several large bodies of concrete with handball (slightly different rules, but then most places had their own variation) squares. It was quite popular back in the day and there was a long period I must have played almost every day. And there was a sandpit, some playground equipment... A lot of stuff, only different areas with different equipment were only in use by the grades allowed in the specific area.

High school had some actual sport fields and a crap load of places to sit. I can't really go into all the stuff as I tended to hang with my mates in out of bounds areas.

We used to spar (one time a mate got chucked through a library window by another mate ), talk about random things, muck around and just generally do whatever we wanted. Why? It was fun and kept us occupied in a school that'd banned almost everything fun.

[ChloChloAriadne]

The first primary school I went to was... Slightly disastrous. My father's strongly Catholic and wished to raise me that way, and so sent me to a Catholic school. But it wasn't just religious.. It was entirely overwhelming. There was no learning or playing. "Play time" was inside, and consisted of colouring in pictures of Jesus and Mary. My friend got her first detention for colouring Jesus' hair in with pink highlighter. My athiest mother pulled me out of that school. ><

Second one I can't even remember.. Not a bit.

Third I can, even though I was only there for a year and a half. There was a park-style play set with monkey bars and a slide and such, but I didn't really play on it. At about ten, I played Tag and Kisschasey.

[Pete]

Oh man, I remember the good ole days quite well. My schools playground was also the school's parking lot, all asphalt. Needless to say, there were a LOT of scraped knees and elbows, but we loved it.

When we were anywhere from grades 1-5, we'd play the usual games, such as tag, freeze tag, and whatever other variations you could come up with. It was good, clean fun.

When we were in grades 6-8, we would play more violent games, such as asses up, which was a derivation of handball, which involved running and touching the wall, before you got tagged or had the ball thrown at you. We'd also play other variations of handball, which were all a lot of fun. On top of that we'd play football (American) and basketball, once our school bought nets. We also played rugby a few times, with a paper lunch bag, full of garbage, which was then covered in duct tape. It actually lasted us a few months, until it ripped open, and we were all covered in rotten food. It was one of the worst experiences ever. We did get to go home early for that though!

We also played manhunt, which was one of my favorite games of all time. It was essentially tag, but with teams. One team would hide, the other would look for them, and instead of a simple tagging, youd have to grab onto the person and yell "manhunt, manhunt 1,2,3- 1,2,3!" and then escort that person to "jail," which was the bike racks by the makeshift handball court. To make it more interesting, people could be freed from jail by members of their own team, so we'd have guards and everything.

I also remember my friend broke his leg and ankle jumping from the church steps to the ground. It was a good 5ft. There were also the trips to "bush gardens," where we'd essentially push each other into the bushes by the church. The groundskeepers hated us for that. haha

I miss the good ole days, when things were simple.
Oh, and yes, I went to Catholic school hence the church.

[Govinda]

Did anyone else ever play Toilet Tig? This is a cultural question. I want to see if that particular game ever made it out of our playground. Basically, the game involved squatting (like you were on a toilet) everytime you got tagged (there would be multiple taggers) and you had to stay in the toilet position until someone crawled through your legs, at which point you were free to run around and free others trapped in the position.

[ChloChloAriadne]

Did anyone else ever play Toilet Tig? This is a cultural question. I want to see if that particular game ever made it out of our playground. Basically, the game involved squatting (like you were on a toilet) everytime you got tagged (there would be multiple taggers) and you had to stay in the toilet position until someone crawled through your legs, at which point you were free to run around and free others trapped in the position.

Haha, yes, we played this. Often. Although people cheated when it was done at lunch times, so it was often done with the teacher supervising, during in class 'free time'.

I wasn't great at this, as nobody could crawl through my legs. I'm only 4'11'' now, so I was tiny as a kid and I was encouraged to not play and just watch. The best thing about that game though, was that as long as there were a few fast people it never ends, until everybody gets tired.

[Unknown Entity]

Did anyone else ever play Toilet Tig? This is a cultural question. I want to see if that particular game ever made it out of our playground. Basically, the game involved squatting (like you were on a toilet) everytime you got tagged (there would be multiple taggers) and you had to stay in the toilet position until someone crawled through your legs, at which point you were free to run around and free others trapped in the position.

Yeah, we played that! Didn't have a name for that game though. We got bored of playing Stuck in the Mud (I think thats what it was called), and if you got tagged, you had to stop and stand ith your arms stretched out until someone ran under them. So we changed it to make it harder. Unfortunatly, the amount of plasters we had to use after that game (the ground wasn't safe playground material lol) forced the dinner ladies to put an end to it. :/

[Martin]

School was fantastic for the first three years. Then my Dad died and I sort of missed a good half year... but then I regained it all back and ended up being a true smartarse. Then when I was about 9 we amalgamated with a nearby school because they were facing closure and it pissed most of us off haha.

Last two years flew by and then all of a sudden off to big school with the big boys and girls. But I know exactly what you mean about it changing. I live a good 20 yards from my primary school, literally a stone's throw away from certain points. And they did all of the renovations and improvements after we left. They did exactly the same at High School and exactly the same at College. I do wonder if University shall buck the trend.

[Unknown Entity]

Last two years flew by and then all of a sudden off to big school with the big boys and girls. But I know exactly what you mean about it changing. I live a good 20 yards from my primary school, literally a stone's throw away from certain points. And they did all of the renovations and improvements after we left. They did exactly the same at High School and exactly the same at College. I do wonder if University shall buck the trend.

I guess no matter where you are, or what school you go to, all the good stuff happens when you have finally packed your bags, gone around with a leaving book, and grabbed your coat eh?

My secondary school is going to be changing one hell of a lot in the next few years. Firstly, its becoming a mixed school. Its been an all-girls from when it was first built, and to change that is just... not right. Interactive boards in every classroom, lights being replaced to brighten the place up, water fountains, a new Year 11 playground (which was done and finished for my NRA, but the NRA was held in the other part of the playground...), and quite a few things are being done up with a lick of paint.

Its not faaaiiiiirrrrr!

[diaryofjane]

At my first Elementary School, was wow. everything was made out off wood. It had like a small amphltheater, the swings were old car tiers boy you could go high on those. One time I was pretty high up, and jumped off it. Scraped myt knee though.

Another time me and my best friend were walking on the edge of the playground... she was comimg one way and I was coming from another... we hit our faces together hard, because the both of us had really bad bloodyy noes.

[Walter Sobchak]

I went to a playground with a few friends the other day. It was a weird experience. Apparently, kids do not go to playgrounds as much as they used to. There were spiderwebs in some portions of the playground, and there was no one there but us.

I must say, slides are much faster when you are bigger.