People wearing Christmas hats bath in a pool of watermelon peel during a Christmas service at a hot spring in Luoyang, Henan province, China, December 24, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Confiscated rare and protected wildlife products such as these stuffed Sumatran tiger skins are burned and destroyed during a ceremony by government forestry and wildlife officials in Banda Aceh, Aceh province, Indonesia May 23, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. (Photo by Irwansyah Putra/Reuters/Antara Foto)

A tourist pauses for photos with her mask on at Sensoji Temple Thursday, January 30, 2020, in Tokyo. The country began evacuating Japanese citizens on Wednesday from the Chinese city Wuhan hardest-hit by the virus. (Photo by Jae C. Hong/AP Photo)

An affected boy walks along a muddy street after heavy rain in Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, Friday, September 2, 2022. Planes carrying fresh supplies are surging across a humanitarian air bridge to flood-ravaged Pakistan as the death toll surged past 1,200, officials said Friday, with families and children at special risk of disease and homelessness. (Photo by Mohammad Sajjad/AP Photo)

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)

An aerial view shows the 11/19 pit and twin slag heaps at the former coal mine site in Loos-en-Gohelle, northern France, November 1, 2015. Loos-en-Gohelle, a town of 7000 inhabitants in the North of France, marked by the closure of coal mines in 1970, has demonstrated a successful transition from coal to a green economy. (Photo by Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)

Re-enactors use flaming torches to write 2023 during the Flamborough Fire Festival, a Viking themed parade in aid of charities and local community groups held on New Year’s Eve on December 31, 2022. (Photo by Danny Lawson/PA Wire via Getty Images)

A Chinese tourist plays with water as she celebrates during the Songkran holiday which marks the Thai New Year in Bangkok, Thailand on April 13, 2023. (Photo by Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters)