15 Things All ‘60s Kids Did When They Stayed Home Sick From School
1960s kids didn’t have all the distractions we enjoy today. There were no smartphones or personal computers to pass the time. Video games were a long way in the future for most children.
This meant that sick days were dull. You may have been happy to stay away from school for a while, but you’d quickly miss your friends and life would become boring.
There were ways in which ‘60s kids could stay occupied, and very few of them involved technology.
1. Watch Black and White TV
There was little entertainment to be had from television in the 1960s. The days of having hundreds of channels were decades in the future, and the daytime programming that did exist was aimed at adults.
Color television had been pioneered in the 1950s, but very few ‘60s homes enjoyed this luxury. You could watch monochrome TV on sick days, but it wasn’t the most exciting pursuit.
2. Read
If TV wasn’t working for you, reading was often the only way to pass the time. The 1960s saw a rise in adventure comics and some of the best Marvel classics. If comic books weren’t your thing, you could always try some young adult non-fiction.
The 1960s was a great time for the publishing industry, and there was little technology to drag children away from the pages of a comic or a classic book.
3. Catch up on Studies
If you’d fallen behind at school, an occasional sick day gave you time to catch up. That homework that should have been submitted today could be put back by another 24 to 48 hours.
Of course, you’d be missing out on additional studies while you were sick, but that was unavoidable. Being sick in the 1960s allowed an opportunity to be back up to date, and with little else to do, schoolwork was an ideal option.
4. Spinning the Latest Discs
Children in the 1960s had limited access to entertainment, but most households possessed a turntable. Staying home from school gave kids an opportunity to spin their parents’ discs and maybe get into their style of music.
Artists in the decade were among the most influential of all, so this was a great time to work through those vinyls and find some of your own favorites.
5. Mindless Labeling
Handheld label printers were the height of technology in the 1960s and were an ideal solution for the bored mind. During those long sick days, the urge to label everything in the home was too strong to overcome.
There was something highly satisfying about sticking the tiny strip to the item in question. If it wasn’t moving, a child would label it.
6. Design With Etch-A-Sketch
Toys that seemed revolutionary in the 1960s are now considered dull by today’s standards. One of the must-have Christmas gifts in the decade was the Etch-A-Sketch, which hit the market in 1960.
It’s a drawing device where anything can be designed by twisting the dials at the bottom of the unit. You can still buy an Etch-A-Sketch, but sales are down significantly from the toy’s heyday.
7. Lean on Imaginary Friends
Children had to make their own fun in the 1960s. Without that technology to distract us, playing on your own was challenging, unless you could harness the power of your imaginary friend.
Hide and seek was a common game throughout the decade, and unless you had a willing parent, your imagination had to take over. Many a happy hour was spent in the cupboard under the stairs waiting for our imaginary friend to find us.
8. Organize Your Collections
Before technology took over, every kid had a collection. Stamps and trade cards were among the more popular pastimes, while coins also helped to fire a child’s imagination.
Sick days were meant for organizing. Maybe you had unhinged stamps that needed fixing in an album. Baseball cards could be checked for duplicates, and when you returned to school, you were ready to swap those doubles with friends.
9. Catch up on the Space Race
There are two things I envy 1960s kids for. One is the music and the second is the fascination over the Space Race. As we know, it all culminated in the 1960 Moon Landings, but there were many significant milestones throughout the decade.
If I were a child at home from school, I would spend every hour reading newspaper articles and books I’d stashed that covered this incredible part of history.
10. Do Some Coloring
Coloring books have made a welcome return to the market. Adults sometimes buy them for nostalgia value, but they’re also finding them to be rewarding and calming. 1960s kids always knew this, and sick days were ideal for catching up with some coloring.
It was one of the most popular hobbies of the decade, and looking back it seems that ‘60s kids were ahead of their time.
11. Build a Fort
Model soldiers provided a diversion for many children in the 1960s. Kids were always setting up battles, while a day or two away from school allowed them to take things a stage further.
The free time was perfect for building a fort and making it part of the battle scene. Some producers provided the materials to construct one, or you could use your imagination by building with Lego or even playing cards.
12. Baking
As a child in the household, it was unlikely that you would be the designated cook. Some kids yearned to practice and develop their baking skills, and sick days might have offered the best chance of doing this.
With adult supervision, we had time and, hopefully, enough patience, to prepare the ingredients. If the cake was edible, you had succeeded, and if it was tasty, this was a bonus.
13. Eat Soup
It doesn’t matter what your age is, being sick means seeking out our favorite comfort foods. Chicken soup would offer a hearty pick-me-up, while tomato was more common here in the UK.
Illness also meant sending out your parents for tonic drinks. Today, these have been rebranded as energy drinks, but their primary purpose in the 1960s was to keep us hydrated when we weren’t eating as we should.
14. Help With Chores
You’d have to be seriously bored to do this, and if you found yourself helping mom with chores around the house, it was a sign that you were ready to go back to school.
There was always something that needed doing: Vacuuming and dirty dishes were high on the list. If you were lucky, you might even be able to boost your pocket money in return.
15. Sleep
If you were genuinely struggling with illness, there was little option other than to stay in bed for most of the day. Hopefully, a parent would be on hand to provide medicine and any food or drink that you could manage.
If it was cold outside, it would likely be chilly inside the house too, so there were worse places to be besides our cozy, comfortable beds.
