Poland's Pia Skrzyszowska (C) wins gold in the women's 100m Hurdles final during the European Athletics Championships at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, southern Germany on August 21, 2022. (Photo by Ina Fassbender/AFP Photo)

Moroccan athlete Soufiane El Bakkali participates in the men's 3000m steeplechase final at the Xiamen Diamond League in China on September 2, 2023. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

Mercedes' team members practice a pit stop with the car of Italian driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli ahead of the Formula One Chinese Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit in Shanghai on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Héctor Retamal/AFP Photo)

People sit on the top of a truck heavily piled with corn-stalks plies as they head for Mogadishu from Afgooye on October 19, 2016. At least four police officers were killed on October 18 when a suicide bomb attacker rammed an explosives-packed car into a police station before fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab group subsequently stormed the area killing at least 10 people, including soldiers and civilians. (Photo by Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP Photo)

Hopeful models together after their casting call for the 2008 for the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival at the Prahran Town Hall on January 23, 2008 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images)

A woman photographs a Norwegian spruce Christmas tree from Oslo after it was lit at Trafalgar Square in central London, December 4, 2014. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Graduates jump as they pose for photographs in front of the Tiananmen Gate and the giant portrait of late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong, on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, June 19, 2014. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

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)