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The other day, I heard my daughter teaching my son a new little song. It was about a skunk and a barnyard. When I asked her where she learned it, she said that she learned it at school and it was how the kids decided who was going to be "IT" for certain games. It brought back a whole flood of memories of the counting games we used to play to determine who would be IT. Whether it was for tag, jumping rope first or any other playground game, choosing IT was always like a game itself.

Here is the one that almost everybody knows:

Eenie, meenie, meinie, moe. Catch a tiger by the toe If he hollers, let him go. Eenie, meenie, meinie, moe.

Then we'd always add:

My mother said to choose the very best one and you are - not - IT!

This was all done by pointing to someone at each syllable of the chant. Another one I remember well is one potato/two potato. Everyone would put in their two "potatoes" or fists into the circle and the counter would knock the top of the fist at each syllable. If you got "more" you had to drop that fist. The one left with a fist was IT.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.

I also learned:

Bubblegum, bubblegum in a dish. How many pieces do you wish? (Someone would say a number, and the counter would keep going until the number was reached)

Here's the one my daughter learned this week:

Skunk in the barnyard, Pee-yew. Somebody ate it, That's YOU!

*15 Minute Moment* Figure out who or what would pull Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve if the reindeer were sick one year.

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