I love these and know a bunch of 'em - I'm always happy when I find some girls to play clapping games with, and especially when they teach me new ones and different variations.

Check out this thread.

"Playmate" is a real classic and is actually based on a popular song that migrated into the folk tradition. More here!

Oh what a great thread how did I miss that? My coolness factor went up ten points with my nephew this afternoon.

Ours was:

"Say say oh playmate
...
slide down my rainbow,
and through my cellar door
..."

On reflection, rainbow doesn't make much sense.

Also, there must've been inflation, because in my day, Mary Mack's mom only gave her 15 cents to see the elephants.

These are both being used in recent TV commercials.

We were really fond of the clapping that went with:

ms. susie had a tugboat
her tug boat had a bell
ms susie went to heaven
the tugboat went to

hello operator
please give me number 9
and if you disconnect me
I'll cut off your

behind the refrigerator
there was a piece of glass
ms. susie sat upon it
and broke her little

ask me no more questions
I'll tell you no more lies
boys are in the bathroom
zipping up their

flys are in the trees
bees are in the park
ms. susie and her boyfriend are kissin' in the
D-A-R-K dark dark dark

We used the tugboat one a lot, too. And I used muddgirl's rainbow/through my cellar door version, too. And I never knew that one had more than one verse -- very cool.

We also very often did the McDonald's commercial ("Big Mac, filet o fish, quater-pounder, french fries, icy coke, thick shake, sundaes, and apple pies. You deserve a break today at McDonald's! And the cup ran away with the spoon, boo hoo!"), which I seem to remember having very complicated hand movements to go with it.

Yes, I had a very commercialized childhood. :-)

Oh, I love the Miss Mary Mack one. It gets stuck in my head all the time. Some of mine were:

Do you know exactly how to eat an Oreo
How to do it and
When to chew it really fast?
'Cause a kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo cookie
Leave the outside
For last

Which I guess fits in well with the commercialism aspect. It had really complicated hand movements. Also:

Down down baby
Down by the rollercoaster
Sweet sweet baby
I'll never let you go
Caught you with your boyfriend
Naughty naughty
Wouldn't do the dishes
Lazy lazy
Stole a piece of candy
Greedy greedy
Jumped off a building
Crazy crazy

Which was kind of featured in the movie, "Big". Others, too. One involved "Ooh Aah I lost my bra. I left it in my boyfriend's car," which is either really funny or really disturbing for first graders to sing.

We had a weird one:

Winston tastes good just like a [snap]
cigarette should just like a
ooh ah
want a piece of pie
Pie too sweet
want a piece of meat
Meat too tough
want to ride the bus
Bus too full
want to ride a bull
Bull too mean
want a jelly bean
jelly bean too sour
We got the power
to close our eyes and count to ten...
[clapping continues]
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!

Don't really know why were were singing about cigarettes in Massachusetts at age 6...

There was also something about:

A peach, a plum
a half a stick of chewing gum
and if you want the other half
this is what you say...

but I have no idea what came before or after that.

Also, we continued Sil's Miss Suzy one with:
The dark is like a movie
A movie's like a show
A show is like a tv set and that is all I know
I know my mother
I know I know my pa
I know I know my sister with the 40D cup bra bra bra!

Here is a thread from chicklit forums with lots of rhymes. It's quite amazing that little girls all over the world are singing pretty much the same rhymes.

Wow, yes, this takes me back. I used to play clapping and skipping games at school. My clapping partner was Bernadette O'Shea and we'd do the classic one:

"My mama told me
If I was good-y
That she would buy me
A rubber dolly.

My auntie told her
I kissed a soldier
Now she won't buy me
A rubber dolly.

3-6-9
The goose drank wine
The monkey chewed tobacco
On the street car line (we had no idea what this was)
The line broke
The monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven
In a little rowing boat."


We also used to do a very complicated clapping game, the words of which I don't remember apart from the first line which was "under the bramble bushes", but it was the sequences of claps, with hands turned different ways that I remember.


I also remember:

A sailor went to sea-sea-sea
To see what he could see-see-see
But all that he could see-see-see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea-sea-sea

This would be the classic clap game of hands together then right cross-left cross but when we got to the sea-sea-sea bit we'd do three little salutes.

The later verses made no sense.

A sailor went to chop-chop-chop
To see what he could chop-chop-chop, etc.

And this would have a chopping motion with right hand across left elbow.

Then

A sailor went to knee-knee-knee ...

With left knee lifted, right hand tapping

And the grand finale!

A sailor went to sea-chop-knee...

Incorporating all three motions.


The skipping game I remember most was one where two girls would be turning a long rope and there'd be a line of girls waiting to play. The first girl would run into the rope and we'd all sing:

Vote vote vote for little Susan (or whatever her name is)
Susan wants Jan in the rope-rope-rope (at which point I'd run into the rope and Susan and I would jump together)
Now Jan's come, we'll some jolly fun (oy! we were ten years old, what can I say?)
And we don't need Susan any more - so SCRAM!

At which point Susan would run out of the rope, and the song would start again with

Vote, vote, vote for little Jan
Jan wants Deborah in the rope-rope-rope ...


I remember playtimes at junior school, I was never still. Always skipping, playing with a ball, doing something active.

We did lots of these as well. Especially two that ej mentioned - a sailor went to sea-sea-sea and Under the Bramble bushes

Under the bramble bushes
Over the sea (boom boom boom)
True love for you my darling
True love for me
When we get maaaaaaaaaaried
We'll raise a family
A boy for you
A girl for me
And that will be our family
[then devolved into various silliness]

I can't seem to remember that Miss Sue one with a tugboat. I woke up thinking it was something like

Miss Sue Miss Sue
Miss Sue from Alabama
Hey hey Billybob
Mama's in the kitchen
Daddy's in the....


ok so I can't remember the rest.

I remember we would get into contests to see which pair could clap the fastest. This is so cool that so many of us have the same memories

Can't wait for the next meetup, gaspode!

We did sil's Miss Suzie one - almost exactly the same! - but for us it was Miss Lucy. How odd. meeshell, I'll try to call my daughter & get you the Miss Sue words; she used to do that one all the time. Here's a charmingly morbid one that we did; another about Miss Lucy:

Miss Lucy had a baby
She named it Tiny Tim
She put it in the bathtub
To see if it could swim

It ate up all the water
It drank up all the soap
It tried to eat the bathtub too
But it wouldn't go down its throat

Miss Lucy called the doctor
The doctor called the nurse
The nurse called the lady
With the alligator purse

The doctor said the measles
The nurse said the mumps
The lady with the alligator purse said the lumps.

Miss Lucy cried and cried
Because her baby died
With 48 toes and a pickle on its nose
And that's the way my story goes!

And we used to sing this next one to the tune of The Saints Go Marching On - it's pretty gory - wow, on remembering it, it's worse than I thought. Keep in mind this was the 70s, too, way before Columbine - nowadays you'd probably get expelled for singing this. Bloodthirsty little beasts; this was from like 3rd or 4th grade.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
We have tortured every teacher
We have broken every rule
We are marching down the hall to kill the principal and all
Our truth is marching on.

Glory, glory hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
I met her at the door with a loaded 44
And there ain't no teacher anymore.

mgl, I did the Miss Lucy and the baby one, too, but our version stopped after the "alligator purse" line.

Weird. I seem to have been doing truncated versions of all of these. Guess the whole versions didn't make it intact to the interior states. :-)

OOOH! I totally forgot about Miss Lucy we did that one too!

These are great! mgl that one was especially funny - never heard it. We had a song about Annabelle...

had legs like tooth picks
and a neck
like a giraffe
annabelle
went upstairs to
something something
take a bath

some stuff I don't remember

Oh my goodness oh my soul
there goes annabelle down the hole!
Annabelle? Annabelle!
glug glug glug

And then there was the one about

Three little fishes ....
swam and they swam
all over the dam

boop boop diddum daddum waddum choo

We sung Miss Mary Mack and Rockin' Robin, which I think everyone is familiar with, all the time. I was a master at clapping games.

I sang some similar ones as above, but different. We sang:

Winston tastes good like a
cigarette should, like an
ooh ah
wanna piece of pie
Pie too sweet
wanna piece of meat
Meat too tough
wanna ride the bus
Bus too full
wanna ride a bull
Bull too black
Want my money back
Money too green
Makes me mean
Mama had a baby like a tangerine

...


Down, down baby
down by the roller coaster
Sweet sweet baby
I'll never let you go
Shimmy shimmy coca pop
Shimmy shimmy high
Shimmy shimmy cocao puff
Shimmy shimmy breakdown
I had a boy,
he was the best boy..

I can't remember the rest. :cry:

A (guy) friend and I sat at a bar one night trying to remember all these rhymes. He grew up in India, so he had some different ones to share. It was so much fun, although we looked like nerds. Thanks, rmless2 for finishing the Miss Suzie one, I have been trying to remember that one for a while now.

We had a jump rope rhyme about Cinderella. We tried to get higher and higher numbers (of jumps) at the end each time.
Cinderella, rella, rella
All dressed in yella, yella, yella
Went upstairs, stairs, stairs
To kiss a fella, fella, fella
She made a mistake, stake, stake
And kissed a snake, snake, snake
How many doctors will it take
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...

youngergirl, did you grow up in the Midwest?

we did Cinderella and Miss Mary Mack as jumprope rhymes. We also played elaborate cat's cradle and folded-paper games. Clapping or pat-a-cake games weren't much in the vogue with my peers; they were actually kind of frowned upon as 'babyish' by the time I was in first grade - tho the thought of first graders scorning anything as 'babyish' is absurd in its own right.

mgl, we sang "The Burning of the School", and congratulations, you're the only other person I've ever heard of besides my classmates who even knows it.

bloodthirsty little beasts, indeed... my beloved Uncle Lyman taught me that one! *sigh* s'pose it would be downright irresponsible of me in this day and age (and *gasp* in Denver, even!) to teach it to my neighbour's second grader.