Hop Scotch

Hop Scotch

I think if a few more children would realize the fun they could have playing this old street game, we would see less overly chubby kids around.

Hop Scotch was a game for both boys and girls

This was a favorite game of mine although I don't think I was great at playing it.

We had the ideal place to place to play as outside on the pavement ( here called the sidewalk= took me forever to get used to this American term) we had slabs of paving stone so it was very easy to get a piece of chalk and mark out the hopping squares. Stones and pebbles were all around so we were set. You could either play by yourself or with friends.

The idea of the game is to throw your pebble into square 1 and if it lands inside the square but not touching a line, you would hop up the squares, landing 2 feet then hop and land again till you get to the end where you then turn around and hot scotch back picking up your pebble as you pass it. If you step on a line or put a foot down when you shouldn't or fall over you lose your turn. If you complete it you get to throw again into square 2 and so on.

As I remember some of the kids were so good at it they could do the whole thing before it got to your turn which would make for a lot of grumbling from the ones waiting.

This is a very ancient game and supposedly was invented by the ancient Romans as a practice exercise to train their soldiers in complicated foot work. Some of their hopscotch courses were over a 100 feet long. The children of the time saw the soldiers practicing and so the evercise got copied and then traveled all over the ancient world.

So if you have some kids who don't know what to do give them a piece of chalk and let them play . They will have fun I know it!