7 things you made growing up in the 60s or 70s, but children today wouldn't know how

• Children were a resourceful bunch in the 60s and 70s
• They were able to make all sorts, often from scrap left lying on the street
• How many of these things do you remember making?

If you grew up in the 60s or 70s, there are some things you’ll almost certainly remember making.

Before the likes of video games and streaming, children often had to make their own fun - sometimes quite literally, from scraps they found lying around on the street.

While some of these crafts are still practised by youngsters today, other skills are dying out.

From daisy chains to catapults and go-karts, how many of these things do you recall making as a child?

Daisy chains

The art of daisy chain-making has not been lost completely, but in an age when children spend so much time indoors glued to their phones, it is in danger of dying out.

Was there any better way to while away the hours on a sunny summer’s day than making daisy chains for yourself, your friends or your parents?

Sure, it could be frustrating and required a lot of patience, but completing the chain was so rewarding.

Catapults

A catapult was part of the arsenal for many children back in the 60s and 70s, with many making their own.

People recall hunting for a good piece of wood and often whittling it into shape before finding the best elastic, which was often the rubber from a bike tube.

Homemade catapults could be lethal, but thankfully they were rarely used as weapons.

Many youngsters used old tins for target practice, while others would take aim at the windows of abandoned buildings on old bomb sites.

Tie-dye shirts

Tie-dye shirts were all the rage in the 60s and 70s, when swirling multi-coloured tops became the unofficial uniform of the hippy.

Most people who grew up then will remember making one by scrunching up a plain top, securing it with rubber bands and applying the dye. You then had to wait 24 hours before rinsing out the dye and washing and drying the shirt.

Some youngsters loved their tie-dye shirt, which was many people’s first attempt at DIY fashion, but the results were mixed.

Model rockets

Space fever gripped the world during the 60s, as the US and the USSR competed to explore the cosmos.

The first moon landing in 1969, in particular, fuelled a huge interest in rocket-making among children.

Younger children might make a simple rocket from a cardboard tube or empty washing-up bottle, perhaps propelling it skywards using a mixture of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.

Older children would buy one of the many model rockets available back then, which came with low-power explosives.

They typically came with a parachute to ensure a soft landing, but it didn’t always open, meaning many rockets only ever made one flight.

Go-karts

Children of the 60s and 70s were a resourceful bunch who would make the most of any street ‘treasure’ they found.

All you needed to make your own go-kart were the wheels from an old pram, a few discarded planks of wood, some basic tools and a little know-how.

Children would work together to build their own go-karts from whatever they salvaged, sometimes with a little help from their parents, before taking it in turn to race them down the street, at a time when there were fewer cars on our roads.

Kites

It’s the timeless pursuit that helps George Banks reconnect with his children at the end of the classic 60s film Mary Poppins.

Back then, children used to make their own kites to fly.

All you needed was some brown paper, string and garden canes, with a few strips of newspaper or some cut-up rags for a tail. When plastic carrier bags became more common, children would use those too.

They took minutes to make and decorate, but could provide hours of fun. They were surprisingly durable, too, often lasting much longer than today’s shop-bought plastic kites.

And if they broke or got stuck up a tree, it was easy to fix them or make a new one.

Chatterbox fortune tellers

Give them a sheet of paper and a pencil, and what child of the 60s or 70s couldn’t rustle up one of these handheld fortune tellers in a matter of seconds?

They went by various names, including chatterboxes, snapdragons and cootie catchers, a moniker that was more popular in the US.

But whatever name you used, the premise was the same.

You’d put your fingers inside the four flaps, ask a friend to pick a colour and then open and close the flaps as many times as there are letters in that colour.

Your friend would then pick one of the numbers inside and you’d once again open and close the flaps the corresponding number of times before choosing your fortune from the numbers available.

That fortune could be anything from what would happen later that day to your future career or who you’d end up going out with. Some people also wrote down dares for their friends to complete.

Are there any other items you loved making in the 60s or 70s that you think children today wouldn’t know how to make?

If you enjoyed this trip down memory lane, you might like our look back at how different school was in the 60s and 70s.