Remember hopscotch from 1950s & 1960s?

Although I assumed my post-WW2 generation invented hopscotch, that seems highly unlikely. The earliest confirmed mention of the game actually comes from Britain in C17th; in fact a manuscript book of games from 1635-72 by Francis Willughby and an entry in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1677 contain the earliest references. Hopscotch players on side of roadThe grid was added in chalkTe Ara New ZealandChildren all over the world play Hopscotch in much the same way, but the patterns they draw can be very different. Children in Scotland have a game where the pattern is like bananas lying next to each other. In Japan there is a pattern that looks like an old telephone with a rotary dial, and in France there is Escargot, a pattern that looks like a snail. In Vietnam there is a game called Build A House, which has floods, fires and the Mekong River, and in China there is a game with an animal’s head at the top of the pattern. There are clearly many different versions of the game.In Australian…