Summary

Game names (and types): 'Hide the Button', 'A Wedding Ring' (seeking games), 'Heads or Tails' (choosing game), 'Flipping the Shilling' (miscellaneous play)
Alternative type: play with props/equipment

Handwritten descriptions of two seeking games and games involving coins compiled for Dr Dorothy Howard by Gay Klavikoski, Paddy Hutton, Fay Hutton, Diana Park and Marilyn Skinner, students at Clayfield College, on 15 October 1954. Klavikoski describes 'Hide the Button' as a popular party game, which involves players hiding a coin for one child to seek. Players indicate whether the seeker is getting closer to the coin's location by saying 'hot' or 'cold'. Paddy Hutton describes 'A Wedding Ring', which involves players forming a circle with one child remaining to the side. A ring is placed on a loop of string and hidden amongst the group for the remaining child to locate. If successfully located, the child exchanges places with the bearer of the ring. Fay Hutton lists some examples of play involving coins. She writes that a coin can be tossed to determine who begins a game or coins can be thrown into a stream for children to locate. Park describes 'Heads or Tails', which involves spinning a coin and guessing which side will face upwards. Skinner describes 'Flipping the Shilling', a game which involves balancing a card with a coin on top of your middle finger. Players attempt to flip the card out from underneath in an attempt to balance the coin directly on their finger.

One of a collection of letters describing a children's games written to children's Folklorist Dorothy Howard between 1954 and 1955. Dr Howard came to Australia in 1954-55 as an American Fulbright scholar to study Australian children's folklore. She travelled across Australia for 10 months collecting children's playground rhymes, games, play artefacts, etc. This letter, together with the other original fieldwork collected by Dr Howard during this period, is preserved in the Dorothy Howard Collection manuscript files, part of the Australian Children's Folklore Collection (ACFC), Archive Series 3. The ACFC is an extensive collection documenting children's folklore and related research.

Physical Description

Handwritten game descriptions in blue ink on lined paper. Features text by five different hands; text printed on both sides of page.

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