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)

Afghan children play at a brick-making factory on the outskirts of Jalalabad city, eastern Afghanistan on November 13, 2019. (Photo by Reuters/Parwiz)

A girl eats a watermelon slice while at a school building where Syrians – displaced from the area of Ras al-Ain by the Turkish offensive on the northeast – are staying in the city of Hasakah, on June 30, 2020. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo)

A Palestinian man plays with a horse at the beach of the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday October 1, 2021. The beach is one of the few open public spaces in this densely populated city. (Photo by Hatem Moussa/AP Photo)

Giraffes doing the splits to get a drink of water from the watering hole at the Zimanga Private Game Reserve in South Africa on March 31, 2022. (Photo by Hendri Venter/Animal News Agency)

Triathletes swim during an Ironman event in Taupō, New Zealand, on Saturday, March 1, 2025. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

A child plays with a cat next to a makeshift animal shelter at Cihangir neighbourhood in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, March 23, 2023. Turan comes every single day with cat food in his hand to the makeshift shelter he helped build with the other volunteers in the area and takes care of the needs of the cats that reside their every single day. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

An Afghan hunter shoots at a duck in Laghman province, Afghanistan on May 30, 2018. (Photo by Reuters/Parwiz)