An Aging Author's Daily Diversions

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Historical Tidbits: April 18, 2022
marylouisalocke.substack.com

Historical Tidbits: April 18, 2022

Mary Louisa Locke
Apr 18
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Historical Tidbits: April 18, 2022
marylouisalocke.substack.com

Daily Diary, April 18, 2022, Day 596: My experiment with starting my writing week on a Saturday worked splendidly. Over the weekend, I wrote 2,188 new words on my story, Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime. I also maintained a good schedule of walking, PT exercises, and I almost finished the audiobook I am listening to and still took a few phone calls from friends who needed to talk.

I even took the time to go on a few research side trips, which can often get me off track when writing. In this case, I went down the rabbit hole looking for examples of 19th century finger games people played with children.. This started when I had Mrs. Stein play “patty-cake,” with Abigail, who is just over one in this story. I looked up patty-cake in the Ngram google search site that tells you how often a term is used by year (to make sure it is historically accurate.) I found that in 1882 this was very obscure term (compared to now.) So then I had to research finger games in general to see what would be familiar. One thing I discovered was that this game was called “pat-a-cake” back then, but I also found a great book that listed favorite finger games for children. Fingers Plays: For Nursery and Kindergarten by Emilie Poulsson was published in 1893, and it has illustrations, music, and words for seventeen different children’s games. The one I was familiar with was called “All for Baby” and I've added the illustrations below. I would love for you to check out the link and tell me if any of the games were familiar to you in the comments!

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dwharton1
Apr 29Liked by Mary Louisa Locke

Love the rhyme!, so adorable. At 67, I feel when I look at my g-kids they are missing out, as rhymes and poems of old are lost to rapping, etc. And those rhymes and poems of old tell heartwarming tiny stories and sweet little words of wisdom, or just fun for all to read. 🤗

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Chris Minogue
Apr 18Liked by Mary Louisa Locke

Thanks for a journey back in time. I looked through these games and was amazed that I’d never heard of any of them! These are great for child/baby entertainment but would also be fun for the kinder and early elementary age group. I would have used some of them with my Brownies back in the day. 😊

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