Games that made my Childhood

This is my favorite topic among the topics listed for this week in the Hive learners community weekly contest.

It brings a rush of beautiful memories of what an unforgettable childhood I had.

I sincerely feel like this generation "The Indomie Generation" as we do call them, haven't experienced as much fun as we did while growing up.

You know, we had the privilege to have real physical communication and involvement with one another.

This built and developed our communication skills and ability to deal with people.

So here I will be sharing just 5 out of the many games I played in my childhood days.

They are much more than 10 but I would be sharing just 5 of them.

🕹5 Games I Enjoyed Playing

🕹 X and O: This is also known as TIC-TAC-TOE is a game for 2 players.

X&O

A 3 by 3 grid is drawn with a total of 9 boxes. Each player takes turns in filling the boxes with an assigned letter either X or O.

A player wins when his/her letter gets marked in a row, that is up, down, across, and diagonally.

Winner

I love this game not just for the fun part but also for the fact that it requires strategic thinking, good observation, and calculation of your opponent's next move.

🕹 SUWE: It is a very popular game that was played in almost all neighborhoods in Nigeria.

A big rectangular shape is drawn on sandy ground or cemented ground with chalk.

Something like this

With a line drawn vertically dividing the rectangle into half, then 3 horizontal lines are drawn, giving 6 boxes with a 7th box that is not divided vertically.

That 7th box is bigger, it is used as a point of relief. After a player had hopped from the first box to the 7th, he can rest there a while before returning.

It can accommodate multiple players but a minimum of 2 players.

Each player takes turns throwing a stone or plastic into the squares starting from 1 to the last 7.

Then they hop on one leg, ensuring they don't step on a line.

Hop hop hop

In this game, you can acquire houses, which makes it more difficult for your opponent. Because once a house is yours, your opponent cannot step on it.

🕹 "I CALL ON!": This is an educative game as it entails each player thinking real quick when an alphabet is given.

Each player has a paper with a box drawn and alphabet, name, place, animal, and thing written at the top.

The 26 English alphabets are written vertically under the Alphabet heading.

A person who serves as the moderator would say "I CALL ON LETTER M"

After which every player begins to write a name that begins with the letter M, a place that begins with letter M, an animal name that begins with the letter M and a thing that begins with the letter M.

It is up to the moderator to stop them, all he has to do is say "STOP" and immediately all pens would be up.

The moderator would check each player's work and judge if what they wrote is accurate.

This really helped us get familiar with NOUN, which we know to be a naming word.

🕹 Tinko-Tinko: It is a hand game that involves multi-players.

2 or more players face each other clapping their hands in an up, down, and back manner as they sing the song
🎶Tinko tinko tinko tinko tinko🎶

The number of times they hit their hands increases numerically from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to any amount.

The first player to get tired is the loser. It was played mostly by girls

🕹 After Round One: This game is very popular in the streets of Nigeria. It is a game for more than 2 players.

Each player picks a number between 1 to 10 and shoves their hands gently on the ground or whatever surface they are playing the game on while singing the song.

"After round one original panadol extra otun gbe de babangida ya so"

Once they say "ya so" every player places a random number of fingers on the ground/surface they would count, they would continue to change fingers until they arrive at the number one of them had picked.

This would go on till the last 2 players, after the number of one of the players is gotten the last person would offer his hand as a sacrifice to be slapped, lol.

Every player takes turns slapping the back of the person's hand while he tries to dodge it.

In this game, if you are not lucky, you would go home with a very steamy red palm.

That's about all of the games I decided to share. If you are a typical Nigerian, you would be able to relate to these games.

Some of them are also practiced outside Nigeria like the Tic-tac-toe and Hopscotch.

I hope you had fun reading this and had beautiful memories.

I could see you smiling when you were reading it, I'm glad my mission was accomplished. 🤪😉

Thank you for your time.