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Summertime – “Sky Blue”

by Jennifer Asimow

What did you think when you saw the title of this blog post? If someone were to shout out, “Sky Blue” what comes to your mind? Now I might be dating myself, and this may have been specific to my neighborhood but I can only think of Hopscotch when I hear, “Sky Blue.”

I grew up with two sisters and we spent countless hours outside in the summer playing hopscotch. When we were super little, my mom drew the hopscotch pattern on the sidewalk and when we got bigger, my big sister did it. Over the years we got really creative with the hopscotch outlines and the rules of play but when we were little hopscotch was all about hopping on one foot or two through the pattern until we got to the top and yelled out”Sky Blue”.

I never thought much about it, but Hopscotch is a great outdoor, summer game that includes all sorts of early mathematical concepts. Depending on the rules of play, children may need to call out the numbers as they land on them, skip the number that their rock is on (and then figure out which number comes after the skipped one). The rules can include calling out “one foot”, “left foot”, etc. Children also have to hop backward to return, which requires the reversal of the numbers!

There are all sorts of ways to lay out the field. We always wrote “Sky Blue” at the top. There are several ways to play. Click here or here to see some descriptions of how to get started.

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