There are a lot of reasons to encourage your child to play more old-fashioned style games. For one, they're usually cheaper, as at the time of their creation the children that made them didn't have expensive mass-produced toys. But even aside from that, psychologist Elena Bodrova says that the loss of the use of imagination in our children's play time has affected their cognitive skills.
Tag
This is the most obvious game to go on the list, and it is first because kids still play it today. What makes this game so good is how simple and basic the rules are. One player is "it" and must catch another player. That player is then "it," and the game continues. Variations include freeze tag, and it has been incorporated into variants of other games such as hide and seek.
Skipping Songs
Skipping songs are songs that children (usually girls) sing while skipping rope. Some of them were simply songs that did not involve participation, but some songs had rules. One example is a song in which the months of the year are called out, and players much jump out of the skipping line when their birth month is called. Another is the Cinderella song:
"Cinderella dressed in yella,
Went upstairs to see her fella,
Made a mistake and kissed a snake,
How many doctors did it take?"
The players then count for as long as they manage to skip.
Hopscotch
This game has different rules depending on the variations being played. One common style of play is drawing a 10-square hopscotch board. Then throw a token, such as a rock, onto the board. Skip across, and then skip back, this time grabbing the rock. Scoring differs almost as much as style of play, but common rules are to add up the numbers of the squares the rock lands on or to simply call the player a winner if his token lands on the number 10.
Capture the Flag
This game is now commonly found in airsoft and paintball arenas as well as video games. The rules are fairly simple. There are two teams, and each team has its own flag (which might not be an actual flag). The goal is to get the other team's flag and return it to your team's base. There are additional rules depending on how complex a game the players are willing to play. These extra rules might include the ability to capture players or simply tag them out of the game.
