To play many of the games, such as tag, hide and seek etc., one child had to be chosen from the group. This had to be done in a fair way acceptable by everyone concerned. The children’s way of solv­ing this problem was a series of slowly pronounced words separated into syllables, of which one corres­ponded to each child. They would form a circle and one spoke the words pointing with every syllable to each child going around clockwise. The whole phrase consisted of a mixture of Italian, English, and sometimes Greek words, usually slightly altered to suit them and had no meaning.

For games with action, the necessary objects were provided by nature such as a goat’s knucklebone, stones, branches, pieces of wood cut and shaped accordingly, also objects of daily use like coins and tin cans.