In a simpler time all a child or an adult needed to enjoy the outdoors was a ball and a stick. Or maybe an old tire tied to a high branch to fashion a swing. And the only instruction given to children was to “be home before dark”. Now there are iPads and computers and television screens and shrinking safe public spaces. But despite the distractions and limitations of space, these images show the charm of kicking a ball or skipping rope endures. Sometimes with modifications as a nod to changing times. Here: in this Saturday, June 20, 2015 photo, a boy runs while playing with a motorcycle wheel in Samugari, Ayacucho, Peru. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

Subway passengers walk past bronze sculptures representing the Soviet people at the Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro station in Moscow, on November 14, 2012. The station was opened in 1938. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP Photo)

A cafe-restaurant staff stands outside as people drink coffee in Monastiraki district of Athens, on Monday, May 25, 2020. Greece restarted regular ferry services to its islands Monday, and cafes and restaurants were also back open for business as the country accelerated efforts to salvage its tourism season. (Photo by Petros Giannakouris/AP Photo)

Activists from the animal rights group PETA wearing bikinis and crocodile masks assist each other outside a store of the French fashion label Hermes in Sydney on March 4, 2021, as they protest against their use of crocodile skins and the recent purchases by Hermes and LVMH of crocodile farms in Australia's Northern Territory. (Photo by David Gray/AFP Photo)

A four-legged robot dog called SPOT patrols a park as it undergoes testing to be deployed as a safe distancing ambassador, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Singapore on May 8, 2020. (Photo by Edgar Su/Reuters)

Palestinians sit in a fishing boat loaded into a horse cart as they pass on a street in the northern Gaza Strip on October 19, 2022. (Photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

A ten-week-old North China leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis) is handled during a routine health check in the Zoo of Debrecen, northeastern Hungary, 30 January 2024. The female cub, which was born on 21 November 2023, belongs to a leopard subspecies that is endemic to the forest habitats of Northern China. (Photo by Zsolt Czegledi/EPA/EFE)

A handler displays newly born American green Iguanas at the Snake park in Chennai on May 27, 2024. (Photo by R.Satish Babu/AFP Photo)