Freeze Tag
Statues
Red Rover
What kinds of outdoor games did you play as a kid? What were the rules? Who taught you how to play?
I remember playing infinate variations of Tag and other games as a kid, running and playing until it was dark out (or being called home to take a break for dinner). I never see kids out doing this now.
Also as a kid I never remember anyone teaching us how to play (unless it was another kid. No adults ever taiught us these games).
So spill it what were your faves? What did you hate? How did you play?
Ollie Ollie Oxen Free!
One of my favorites was Beckon, which was all the rage during third-grade recesses.
It’s a variant of hide-and-seek – the variation being that once you got found, you had to follow “it” around while he or she kept looking for people. Yes, you could try to sneak off – and if you did so without getting caught, you could hide again. “It’” didn’t win until he or she had all the hiders trailing along behind him or her.
Kick the Can was a HUGE one when I was young. Heck, we still play it every once in a while.
Statue was played also, but we called it Museum.
Red Light/Green Light was always a hit, but we had to go to the park to play it. That would cause other neighborhood kids to get involved and it would turn into a free for all.
Hopscotch, 4Square were often played, but just by us girls.
In the winter it was King of the Hill- and we even had a decent sledding hill at the end of our block to do it on.
We played all of them from BurnMeUp’s list and
Capture the flag
Hide and seek
Simon says
Dodge ball
Jump rope
Chinese jump rope
My son and his friends played hide and seek, (until one kid hid to well for too long and a neighborhood mama forbid it) tag and capture the flag. He is 17 and his circle of friends still likes to play capture the flag when they are not doing more sophiticated things like dating, playing football, wakeboarding and working.
We played a paranoid mutation of Hide-N-Go-Seek and Tag called Werewolf that was made up one summers eve on the spot after watching a monster movie. Play started at dusk as standard HNGSeek, with one person counting as everyone else hid in the woods. This person was the Wolfman. If he found you hiding, the chase was on! Once he tagged you, you were a werewolf too and had to help hunt down the others. The game ended when the last person was run down by a pack of werewolves at night in the woods. If the last person happened to be one of the neighborhood little kids, the game invariably ended with the kid running straight for home, screaming in terror!
I always had the most fun playing British Bulldog. I believe we learned it in Scouts. Nominally, the rules involved gathering all of the kids at one end of the field, save one, who stood in the center. Everybody would then run to the other side. The kid in the center who would try to run down and tackle people as they ran by before they could reach the safe zone at the other side of the field. Anybody who fell down would join him. This process would be repeated until one person was left. Then it would start over.
Mostly it just turned into a big free-for-all brawl. 
Come to think of it, most of my favorite games involved hurting people. Army Dodgeball, for example. If it hadn’t been for the safe outlets I’d probably have become a serial killer or something…
Not troop 406 in Sunnyvale, California, by some off chance?
I loved British Bulldog. A favorite game of ours that I’ve never heard of from anyone else was called Zorch:
You gather on a wooded hillside at night (Zorch is usually played on camping trips). At the top of the hill you put a can of rocks. Above that, you put a guy with a powerful flashlight. Everyone else is at the bottom of the hill.
They start sneaking up the hill. Any time the guy at the top thinks he hears (or, in the darkness, sees) someone, he points the flashlight and flicks it on for just a moment. If he illuminates anyone in that beam, they must go back to the bottom of the hill.
If someone grabs the can of rocks, they win, and they become the flashlight-wielder for the next round.
My favorite outdoor game, however, is 4-square.
Capture the Flag
Tag
Hide-and-go-seek
Kick the Can
German Spotlight: A combo of tag and hide-and-go-seek, played after dark with It holding a flashlight. If the person who’s it shines the flashlight on you, you become It. The other person must now avoid being hit with the light.
Dragon’s Tail: More of a little kids’ game, but fun. Everyone stands in a queue and puts their hands on the waist of the person in front of them. Then everyone starts running, with the person at the front of the line trying to catch the person at the end of the line.
I remember the neighborhood kids and I made up a very elaborate game involving a soccer ball, and my mom being impressed with how complex it got. Damned if I can remember how we played it, though.
I remember those games!! I have tried tons of times to get my now 14 year old to play these when she was younger, and she just didn’t get it. Television!! Thats what they want!!
We played the usual Tag and some various forms:
T.V. Tag–Like freeze tag only you had to call out television shows and then drop to the ground before they tagged you. There was no base.
Lightening Tag–Mentioned before. Played after the street lights came on and the use of flashlights was needed.
Statue Tag–This was my favorite. The bigger kids would take us smaller kids by the hands/arms and spin us around. When they let go of you, how you landed was the position you would take to start the game, until whoever was it would come buy and unfreeze you.
We also played:
Mother May I? Kinda like Red/Green Light and Simon says only the one who was it or mother had to be asked mother may I before you could actually do what mother told you.
Marco Polo in a swimming pool of course.
Also:
Capture the Flag
Kick the Can
Freeze Tag