Hopscotch is a summer activity. I saw a hopscotch festival in Kelowna. Funny they should have the tournament in a curling rink. It turned out to be a beer festival. And that was a few years ago. It doesn't seem to be very present in terms of activities and interests.
Hopscotch has been with us a long time - since somewhere around 600 BCE in India. It has history in many countries. What makes it a casual game rather than a competitive one? It doesn't look competitive. The World Hopscotch Championship website is from 2016.
And in terms of records, there are only a few. The current Guinness Book of World Records holder for the fastest hopscotch game is Ashrita Furman, at 1 minute and 2 seconds.
The Longest Hopscotch Game was a distance of 7,037.51 m (23,088 ft 11.3 in) a hopscotch game created in Colorado - it has earned the record title for longest hopscotch game and it took 2.5 hours to complete the course. That was in 2022.
It remains a child's game, and is predominantly thought of as a girl's game. Interesting how some activities move into the world sports arena, and others remain on the local block. We will see some unusual sports in the next few weeks.
I was at the nearby Mingle Hill Farmer to their Flower Festival yesterday. There is a lot of lavender there but mostly past its prime. This season has been early, and lavender generally is a June crop. This picture is from a few years ago at the NEOB lavender field in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
"If, while hopping through the court in either direction, the player steps on a line, misses a square, or loses balance, the turn ends. Players begin their turns where they last left off. The first player to complete one course for every numbered square on the court wins the game." The rules of hopscotch are complicated - it is an ancient game played all over the world.
Today's Hopscotch is interesting. There are many sites that are retrieved with the term hopscotch. At the site HopscotchCanada.com one can find children's activities nearby. - there are lots of STEM Camps - there is a continuing connection to mathematics and thinking skills.
And continuing on this theme - this site:
"Hopscotch is the only activity I can think of where she uses both her left and right brain." —SAYEED (PARENT)
"I am THRILLED that there is a safe, interesting, engaging place for children to learn to code. This app really allows his creativity to shine, and his five year old little sister has become so interested in the app, and doesn't even know what coding is. THANK YOU, and keep up the good work!" — Mom, C. to 10 year old son
These recommendations are not from children with chalk on the sidewalk out front of their homes. This is an app for iPads and iPhones for children ages 7 - 13 to make their own software and then use it (generally as games). All of this is at gethopscotch.com
The intriguing connection of this complex game and mathematics achieved prominence in Hopscotch, a novel by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, written in 1963.
In it, "Oliveira is a wandering soul, a man obsessed with memory because the only thing that keeps him going is the question of whether or not any path he could have chosen would have led him to the same place. The book is split into 56 regular chapters and 99 “expendable” ones. Readers may read straight through the regular chapters (ignoring the expendable ones) or follow numbers left at the end of each chapter telling the reader which one to read next (eventually taking her through all but one of the chapters). A reading of the book in that way would lead the reader thus: Chapter 73 – 1 – 2 – 116 – 3 – 84 – 4 – 71 – 5 – 81 – 74 – 6 – 7- 8, and so on."
"Throughout its 500+ pages, Cortazar’s work is full of typographical, linguistic, and conceptual experiments that add to the book’s appeal while avoiding the tinge of gimmickry. Take, for instance, chapter 34, written entirely in the following manner:"
"In September of 1880, a few months after the demise of my And the things she reads, a clumsy novel, in a cheap edition father, I decided to give up my business activities, transferring besides, but you wonder how she can get interested in things them to another house in Jerez whose standing was as solvent like this."
