Boy, we have these wonderful memories of childhood games but not the recollection of how to play them exactly. I fondly recall playing with the stretchy elastic chinese jumprope and tried searching the Internet looking for some direction on how it was done. I found some sort of essay in some forum that had a pretty good description of what I remember the game to be like. Try www.streetplay.com/discus/messages/75/77.html. It covers the In, Out, Side, On, Scissors, and then “smallies and Widies which I don’t think rings a bell with me.

we also did the chinese jumprope as MISSISSIPPI with “M” as both feet inside the elastic, “I” as each foot outside the elastic, “S” as one foot inside the elastic and one foot outside the elastic and the second “S” as the other side, I outside again, repeat the double “S”, “I” again and then the “P” was both feet on the elastic (twice for the double “P”)and then outside again for the last “I” so as we jumped it was “in, out, side, side, out, side, side, out, on, on, out” then we would do the cross over of the elastic so that our feet were inside a diamond shape and you had to jump up and extricate your feet landing outside the elastic. once you did that, you moved on to the next level. it started easy on ankles, then to knees, then thighs and then it started over as doubles (bouncing twice at each position). As the game continued you might be bouncing 4 or 5 times each time you did a jump leaving you breathless, especially when you got to thighs. i can’t even imagine trying to get my body to jump and bounce like it did in the fourth grade. i’d surely pass out now. I have been thinking about the game recently and wanted to get one for my neice. I never made one out of rubber bands. I had a store bought one that was a pink and blue pattern. Do they still exist? I’d love to get her one. glad to know someone besides me still rmembers them.