I grew up in the "impoverished Appalachians" (a photographer from LOOK did a photo essay at our school). My brother and I were not allowed to use any tools except for "real work" (I was driving a tractor at age 7) because they were too expensive to replace. So, instead of the forked stick-and-innertube slingshots, we made a version of Little David's sling with baler twine and pieces of feed sack. Could hurl a rock from the railroad tracks about 100 yards. About 15 feet if you wanted accuracy.
The schoolyard would be overcome with high grass in the spring. It was about waist high on an adult, shoulder high on us. We'd trample out trails and "cabins". To protect our "personal" trails, we'd build traps by tying together the tops of handfulls of grass from opposite sides of the path to trip any interlopers. Resulted in lots of raspberry chins and bloddy noses.
The one recess activity that still astounds me, due to the fact that there were no fatalities, was "flying saucer" wars.
The back of the schoolyard was full of boulders which were dumped there when an underground natural gas line was put through in the early fifties. The janitors would burn trash and dump the non-biodegradeable, non-combustible trash there. This trash included the no.10 cans from the cafeteria. We'd collect stacks of the lids, hide in the boulders, and sail the little suckers at one another. Usually, you'd cut yourself more than you'd get cut by someone else's "saucer".
One afternoon a classmate looked over the top of a boulder at an inopportune moment. She needed nearly 100 stitches in her forehead.
This brought an end to the saucer wars.
For a couple of days.