Sometimes when I watch kids today and all the electronic toys they have, I often wonder what they would do if they had none of that. When I was growing up, we had great imaginations, and played a lot of "pretend" play.
We would put on "talent" shows, and pretend we had amazing costumes, fashioned out of blades of grass (it was "pretend" after all!). Usually the talent was singing (something we knew a lot about) or tap dancing (something we knew NOTHING about)!
We spent hours on our roller skates (the kind with "keys" that clamped the skates onto your shoes) going up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. Skating was a pastime that was enjoyed by most of the neighborhood kids.
We played Jacks endlessly. I got pretty good at it too! :) We played it on the kitchen table, the kitchen floor, the patio, or any other place where the ball would bounce enough.
We played a lot of card and board games: Go Fish, War, Old Maid, Crazy Eights, Candy Land, Chinese Checkers to name a few. My favorite was Chinese Checkers and Crazy Eights. War went on for way too long. Borrrrrring!
We played with our paper dolls which we had carefully punched out of cardboard and cut out the clothes made of, what else, paper. Sometimes we would cut out the Betsy McCall paper dolls from the McCall magazine at my grandma's house. Usually, though, our cousins got to them first! :(
We read books, books, and more books. Voracious. I read a copy of Little Women over and over again until it literally fell apart! I always put myself in the role of the character. In Little Women, depending upon my mood, I was either Meg (the pretty and practical one), Jo (the dependable one), or Beth (the sweet one). I was never Amy (the spoiled one)!
I got a little record player with some records when I was pretty little. I listened to those records over and over. Never got tired of them!
I also had a little baking oven. We still have it somewhere in our family. It did not heat with a lightbulb like the ones nowdays. It had an actual heating element. It came with special sized cake, pie, muffin, and cookie pans. And mixes to make cakes and cupcakes. It was fun!
We spent hours coloring and drawing and cutting and pasting. One time I remember my mom giving us an old phone book and an old Sears catalog. She told us to cut out pictures we liked and paste them in the phone book. I don't think there was a point to the activity (except practicing cutting), but it kept us busy for hours.
It was a lot of fun to be a kid in the 1950s! That's for sure! Kids these days don't know what they're missing!![]()
We would put on "talent" shows, and pretend we had amazing costumes, fashioned out of blades of grass (it was "pretend" after all!). Usually the talent was singing (something we knew a lot about) or tap dancing (something we knew NOTHING about)!
We spent hours on our roller skates (the kind with "keys" that clamped the skates onto your shoes) going up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. Skating was a pastime that was enjoyed by most of the neighborhood kids.
We played Jacks endlessly. I got pretty good at it too! :) We played it on the kitchen table, the kitchen floor, the patio, or any other place where the ball would bounce enough.
We played a lot of card and board games: Go Fish, War, Old Maid, Crazy Eights, Candy Land, Chinese Checkers to name a few. My favorite was Chinese Checkers and Crazy Eights. War went on for way too long. Borrrrrring!
We played with our paper dolls which we had carefully punched out of cardboard and cut out the clothes made of, what else, paper. Sometimes we would cut out the Betsy McCall paper dolls from the McCall magazine at my grandma's house. Usually, though, our cousins got to them first! :(
We read books, books, and more books. Voracious. I read a copy of Little Women over and over again until it literally fell apart! I always put myself in the role of the character. In Little Women, depending upon my mood, I was either Meg (the pretty and practical one), Jo (the dependable one), or Beth (the sweet one). I was never Amy (the spoiled one)!
I got a little record player with some records when I was pretty little. I listened to those records over and over. Never got tired of them!
I also had a little baking oven. We still have it somewhere in our family. It did not heat with a lightbulb like the ones nowdays. It had an actual heating element. It came with special sized cake, pie, muffin, and cookie pans. And mixes to make cakes and cupcakes. It was fun!
We spent hours coloring and drawing and cutting and pasting. One time I remember my mom giving us an old phone book and an old Sears catalog. She told us to cut out pictures we liked and paste them in the phone book. I don't think there was a point to the activity (except practicing cutting), but it kept us busy for hours.
It was a lot of fun to be a kid in the 1950s! That's for sure! Kids these days don't know what they're missing!
