Play - Waterford,MI

My sisters and I had the neighborhood kids to play with, and we were fortunately all in the same age range. We'd play hiding games, group games, ride bikes, play hopscotch. All sorts of things. And we'd play dolls at another age. Basketball games.
Yeah. Before the days of videos or computers. Depending on the age, there were different forms of entertainment. When some of the neighbor kids moved away, we had to come up with our own form of fun. When I got into 2nd and 3rd grade, the focus for us girls was Barbie. So you tended to congregate and shift towards those who had Barbie (or whatever fashion doll)

I recently turned 40, so the games I played as a child may not be known to some of the youngsters here. We lived in town and had fantastic neighbors with kids our age. We spent summers playing tag, backyard baseball, "cops and robbers" on bikes, nighttime tag, frisbee, basketball, garage roof "evie ivie over" (sp?), hopscotch, jump rope games, stilts, hula hoop, we even jumped on an old mattress in my friend's back yard! (no trampolines back then!) I learned gymnastics from a neighbor girl who is still my best friend. We all played outside for hours, day and night. There was no running to check email, playing with i-pods, video games and Tv shows. We had a run down tennis court (still is, in fact) that we spent days at hitting the ball around with a portable radio playing John Mellencamp tunes. There was freedom in the games we played. Knees got dirty, hands were grass stained, and we did more laughing than I think kids do today. We rode our bikes with abandon, never stopping to complain that we were tired or needed to eat! Eating and drinking were secondary to our fun. You wouldn't have caught us stuck inside in the winter either. We spent hours outside playing in the snow. We'd get so cold and numb we could hardly move and would complain that we had to come in.

I have to coax my 10 and 12 year olds to get out and play, and for me, that is so sad! The good thing is, they have parents who grew up playing, and we can engage with them in fun games that cost nothing and we don't have to leave the yard!

Knowing how to play is crucial to growing up as a well-rounded adult!

Hope this helps, and thanks for posting this question. I can't wait to read all your responses. I'm sure it will bring back memories for me!

Don't know about ages 1-5 but after age 5, I know my favorites were:

Dolls, house, mommy, shopping

Barbies - dressing them up and having parties

Reading - anytime, anywhere, anything

My Little Pony's - brushing their hair and prancing around

Coloring

Outside - we'd build a fort out of old sheets and use suitcases for seats / jumping on friends trampolines / going to the pool to swim / making dirt pies / playing on swingsets and jungle gyms

I was a HUGE pretend player.
I played princess, secret agent, cops and robbers, store, etc, the list is never ending.

It depends at what age, but from my memories:
Mostly running outside (and jumping, hoping, chasing...)
Reading
Coloring
Lego, construction blocks, playmobiles
Telling the stories I read to my little siblings and play them together (usually involved princesses and knights)
I was not a girly girl (no dressing-up, barbie, dolls... for me)

We used to ride our bikes and have picnics at least once a week. We made forts in the field at the back of our house and also spend days making dams for the stream and messing about in the water. We played marbles and block - a run and go seek/get back to base game. We walked to the store to get ice cream or comics. We also put on a puppet show in the yard most summers. Living about 10 miles from the sea we went swimming a lot too if our Mum was free to drive us to the beach.There were about 10 of us in the neighbourhood so we played mostly as a big gang all summer. This was 70s/early 80's Great Britain...

I had 2 brothers so I didn't do alot of pretend play that I remember. We swam, rode bikes, read books, did alot of crawdad fishing ! Basically it was whatever we dreamed up !