Figure 1.--Here we see the 17 students at a small rural schoolat Milton, North Dakota (1913). The children are playing a ring game at recess. They have frozen the game because emulsions were still not capable of capturing motion. .

The children at recess played all sorts of games including ring games and free form games like tags. We suspect that the bioys wre most active in this regard. Sport at the time was just beginning to capture the imagination of children, mostly boys even by the end of the century. Gradually the children even in city schools were allowed to play on their own outdoors. Sports by the 20th century had become important for school age children. Baseball had before the turn of the 19th century had become the 'National Passtime'. The classic poem 'Casey at the batt" dates to 1888. Baseball skills for younger boys are beyond their capabilities, so instead kickball became a playground favorite as did dodgeball. Favorite activities varied over time. Girls favored games. Some games attrcted the boys like tug-of-war pictured here. Oyher gmes were of less interest like the ring games the girls and younger boys enjoyed. Boys as they got older favored sports which afterr the miid-19th century began to become popular. This depended a lot on the school on the type of school. Many schools in the 19th century were small rural schools. Many of these schools had plentyy of space, but did not have enough boys to play sport. City schools generrally had play yrds and enough boys that sports could be played. Sports generally involved skills thast the younger boys had not yet mastered. One sollution was kickball--basically base bal but using a kiced ball rather than a ball and bat. Girls rarely participted, at least in the 19590s when I was at school. This may be a little different today. As secondary schools began to become important we see more attention to sport. There was no recess, but there was some time during lunch. Sports did become part of thec gym program and after scghool sports programs. A new sport was even developed for indoor winter play--basketball.

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Created: 9:52 PM 11/11/2022
Last updated: 9:52 PM 11/11/2022