Summary

Game name (and type): 'Tens' (ball game)
Alternative type: ball bouncing, games with actions

Typed description of the ball game 'Tens' composed for Dr Dorothy Howard by Lenore Harding, a student at Collier Primary School, in 1955. Harding describes how 'Tens' is played, providing detailed descriptions of the accompanying physical actions. To play, participants bounce a ball in sets of declining number beginning at ten and ending at one. Each set is accompanied by increasingly complex actions primarily involving clapping.

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

Typed game descriptions on two card-sized papers. Text printed on one side only.

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