Betty King emailed a week or so ago to ask me about grasshopper chairs. Although I made chains, necklaces, and bracelets from plantain, I never learned to make a grasshopper chair. But thankfully I know someone who did: Janet Smart.
Janet graciously allowed me to share a post she wrote about making a grasshopper chair on her blog several years ago.
“Grasshopper Chairs” written by Janet Smart.
When we were kids we didn’t have computers, video games and electronic gadgets that kids have today.
We played outside. All day, in the summer.
We never had cell phones. When Mom wanted us back home, she would go to the front door and holler. We eventually heard her and came home.
It didn’t take much to keep us busy or amuse us during the day. We found many things to do and to play.
After rainy days we would dam up the creek. We would make two or three in a row. The largest one would be in front and one by one we would tear down the dams and see if the first one could hold all the water. It was fun getting in the creek and getting our feet and hands muddy.
We swung from grapevines hanging in the trees in the woods by our house.
We played horseshoes, bad minton and croquet. We played games such as – red light green light, freeze tag, ring around the rosie, red rover- red rover, hide and seek, mother may I?, and chased lightning bugs at night.
And, we sat and pulled the petals off of daisies while we recited “she loves me, she loves me not.”
We made whistles from blades of grass, searched for 4 leaf clovers and made grasshopper chairs.
You want to know how to make grasshopper chairs?
First, you go out and find yourself some plantain. (I didn’t know they were called that, I called them grasshopper plants). My cousin Vera says the younger ones work best, they bend easier.
You make the back of the chair first.
Turn your hand upside down and lay the stems flat across your hand and then fold the ‘legs’ of the chair over them and down in between your fingers. This holds your seat together.
Keep laying the stems flat across your hand and folding the stem beside of it over and down in between your finger to hold it in place.
After you have your seat as big as you want it, grab hold of the stems under your hand and slide your fingers out. The back of your chair will flip up and you will have yourself a grasshopper chair.
Now take a stem and tie it around the legs of your chair to hold it together.
I’m sorry the instructions are pretty confusing. But if you have a bunch of plantain in your yard, get some and give it a try. Teach your kids how to do this vanishing craft.
I thank Vera of Intouchwith for refreshing my memory on how to make them. I couldn’t remember how the chair bottom was held together. We sat around the picnic table after our family reunion and she showed me how to do it.
We made them all the time when we were kids. I remember Mom showing me how to do it. I’d say she made them when she was young, too.
I think they are kinda pretty.
What do you remember doing when you were a child? Did you ever make grasshopper chairs?
Janet and I have been online friends for many years. She is a great writer, cook, and preserver of the old ways! Here’s some places you can visit Janet.
Her blog: Writing in the Blackberry Patch.
Check out Janet’s books here.
And you can visit Janet’s YouTube Channel here.
I adore Janet’s cookbook “Cooking with Family” and her fiction book “Where the Stars Grant Wishes” so be sure to notice those when you visit her book page. “Where the Stars Grant Wishes” tells a sweet love story set in the early 1900s in the Appalachian Mountains. I can’t wait for Janet to write the sequel to it!
Last night’s video: Mountain Talk: Unusual Words & Phrases from the Appalachian Mountains.
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Grasshopper chairs are a new one to me, but if I’d known about them, I’d surely have been making them. We made pine needle zippers.
I remember making those kind of things as a kid. It’s amazing what you can construct when you have to make your own toys. Country folk were very inventive. We would construct grasshopper houses, catch us a big baccy-spittin grasshopper and put him insiee it for a while.
Tipper, I have been trying all day to open your last night’s video, but can’t get it to open for me. I have never had that problem before. Do you know what could be the problem? I sure wanted to watch it.
Cheryl- I’m sorry you’re having trouble. I’m not sure what it could be. You might try restarting your computer or device and see if that helps.
Can’t say that I recall the grasshopper chair, at least not by that name. Pa, being raised in the orphanage, was exposed to things learned by other kids and passed around. I know he made all sorts of things from plants for playthings for kids. We used those plantain seed stalks to make ‘shooters’ by bending the ground end over the stalk, tightening it, then pulling it forward to cause the seed burr to shoot.
Played all those games plus one we called ‘snake in the gutter’ which was a city game. We had a sidewalk in front of the house with a grass verge between it and street such that the verge grass and our yard grass lay on either side of the walk. The one who was ‘it’ stood on the sidewalk and tried to tag anyone crossing. Of course, I’m speaking an untruth when I say there was grass because he kept it pretty much trodden down and jumped from dirt to dirt.
I’ve never heard of these but I’m going to try them.
Some of the things we used to do….we built play houses out of everything…leaves, branches, cardboard, rocks. We planted violets & carpeted the inside with moss.
We caught june bugs (Japanese beetles) in a paper sack…chasing them & scooping them into the bag. Then we would tie a string to a back leg & let them fly around like a kite or a motorized balloon on a string. I guess now that would be considered animal abuse.
We splashed barefoot in summer mudpuddles.
Rode bikes, swung on grapvines, caught lightning bugs & just laid in the grass watching the clouds roll by.
Hi, Tipper. I’m glad everyone enjoyed learning about grasshopper chairs! Thanks for sharing my post and my memories.
A new one to me. We played all the other ones listed.
Oh my, this brought back so many wonderful memories of my childhood! I never had heard of grasshopper chairs either but I remember sitting on the creek bank alongside my grandfather while he fished, making necklaces and bracelets from pine needles, happy as a clam! It brought back so many other wonderful memories of how we entertained ourselves. I remember popping Morning Glories growing on strings along Grandma’s back porch … she never complained or fussed at us. We’d make whirly-gigs from a button and a string, and my older brother would go to the creek with my mother and get pails of white mud and shape them into little pots. Later in life he became an award winning potter and his son a well known sculptor. You never know where the imagination and creativity can lead you! I could relate to most all of the comments, too, and enjoyed them so much. Back then children never complained about being bored. It’s sad that technology has taken so much of that away. Thanks so much for sharing Janet Smart’s blog and bringing back these wonderful memories. Looking forward to checking out her blog!
I guess it has been a long time since I visited the blog Writing in the Blackberry Patch as I didn’t see the blog being kept current. Nice to see she is posting more and those Grasshopper Chairs are unique.
My Father learned to swim by damming up a creek to get the water deep enough. No helicopter parent back then in 1920 and he learned to be a good swimmer. My Mother and her sisters fashioned rooms of playhouses with pine straw and put on their own theatrical performances. Her younger brothers would tie string around June bugs, or horseflies and have them pulling twigs and such around.
In my growing up years, 40’s and 50’s, I just had to be home before dark and since we lived smack dab in the center of our little town, I with my cousins, could explore the whole town and its many parks to play in. My Mother showed us how to take our bare foot and make a Frog House. You just sat down, put your bare foot out and scoop the damp sand (or mud) and pack it over your foot. Then very carefully withdraw your foot out of the Frog House front door. I must say it turned out to be a pretty sturdy little house.
Yes I’ve made Toad Frog houses in wet sand. Lots of fun till a horse drawn wagon came along and crushed it. Made moss beds in laurel thicket. Tied twine to a June bug leg. Called up doodle bugs. Played steal the bacon. Made poplar leaf drinking cups. Chewed rabbit tobacco. Ate green apples. Threw spit balls. Drunk from a long handled gourd at a spring. Hunted pollywogs (?) in a branch. Threw rocks at a hornet nest. Walked a foot log with no rails. Walked a swinging bridge. Used a sling shot. Stepped in chicken manure!! Cracked rotten eggs- UGH!! Made pig pens from split stove wood. Roamed free as the wind on mountain trails with cousins. Chewed birch bark. Chewed ground birch. Made a black gum toothbrush. Climbed grape vines. Rode a home made sled down a slick ridge trail. Jumped over a fence gap. Crawled between barbed wire strands. Picked buckets of wild blackberries. Traced a mountain branch to river.
Ah, sweet memories. No bought toys to speak of. Great childhood.
I would make dandelion necklaces by braiding long stemmed dandelions into a chain then completing the circle to wear the flowers around my neck. I also remember using a string to play a finger game that I can’t remember the name of. You’d tie the ends into a knot then slide it over your fingers, holding them facing each other in front of you. Then you would stick a baby finger underneath the string and pull it out with your fingers sticking up. Then slide the other baby finger under the opposite side string, then repeat using your pointer fingers, resulting in your two middle fingers being in front of the string on each hand. I seem to think the name was Cat’s Cradle. Then there were many ‘moves’ you could make to create things like ‘crows feet’ which you would bite down on the middle portion and the strings magically slid apart and formed long legs with ‘feet’ that you could make walk. This is way too hard to explain in words! There were many shapes this string could create by weaving your fingers into the string but the trick was to never get it tangled. When visiting my cousin in Florida, she taught us to catch the doodle bugs in the sandy ground (you posted about this recently) and we challenged each other to eat kumquats without making a face. In Wisconsin we did the same with Rhubarb. We had circuses on the swing sets and set up chairs for our parents to watch (after paying a popcorn admission) at the end of summer to show off all the tricks we learned during summer vacation. I know that I would have loved making grasshopper chairs if I had ever seen it done. Imagination is a wonderful gift.
I wish we had known about the grasshopper chairs, because we would have been so busy learning how to do that. I agree with Patty Hansen in that children just do not enjoy and use their imagination like we did. It helped that there were not helicopter parents. We could literally roam and explore and learn as long as we had any kind of light. No self-respecting kid would have been caught hangin’ out in a house in summer.
We learned young how to make a cup from a sheet of notebook paper, and then we would run and get a cup from the spring to try out our cup. Hours of fun were had tying string onto June bugs, but this is not one I would ever teach now. We did not need concrete and sidewalk chalk to play Hopscotch. We would just take a stick and draw a Hopscotch in the part of the yard where no grass could grow. Lots of hideouts made at Grandpa’s with any old fallen tree becoming an instant hideout. Fodder shocks and haystacks made great hiding places, and with all those neat places in the woods I don’t know how we ever found anybody. We ate sourweed of some sort, and learned all kinds of berries to eat or not eat. Extended families were so large we had aunts and uncles younger than us, so always too many kids and, of course, all of them out of doors playing. The most cringeworthy thing I did with a younger aunt was play in the chicken house while the chickens were free ranging. We learned to “skin the cat” while hanging from the bars. All that, and we survived childhood!
I don’t see “kick the can” on your list. Of course it’s just a variation of hide-and-seek. with “it” spending more time guarding the can than seeking those hiding. It was more fun after dark because it was easier to sneak past the person guarding the can. I agree with Miss Cindy – not having ready-made entertainment like the kids of today encouraged imagination and creativity.
Well, that’s a new one on me. Wonder if a weaving Mom or a crocheting Mom like yours came up with that. Somehow it doesn’t seem to me as if it would have been a man. (Sure would not have been me. I’m not that inventive.) But stranger things have happened. The grasshoppers should have been proud.
All we ever did with plantain was to shoot the flower heads off. You make a ‘shooter’ by pulling the flower stalk, make a loop of the stem over a couple or three of fingers then up and back over the top of the stem, lastly bending the free end down to clasp the stem a few inches behind the flowerhead. With the other hand, quickly slide the end down and pop the heads off.
Today’s post and comments reminds me of how back in JFK days there was the big push to get kids to exercise because we were too heavy’ (Appalachian for another word). Hah, that was funny for rural Appalachian kids for sure on several counts. Not just us, but rural American kids generally then I’m thinking. Wonder whatever became of that Presidential Fitness Council I seem to recall it was?
Thanks to each of you for sharing.
Never saw grasshopper chairs. Maypop animals were great fun. Passion flower as they are now called. I can’t imagine how anyone can eat the seeds.
My brother and I made boats from pine bark. Cut out an end and put a paddle wheel on using a rubber band. I can still remember the Sunday afternoon when Daddy made each of us a sling shot and then going out and killing a little bird the next week. I think that is one reason I never liked to hunt. Always making a fort or camp site.
One summer I made a marble race track using 2 garden hoses. That was more fun than could be bought today. Brother and I got a large cardboard box and we ran it all over the yard by crawling inside like a hamster. It was our tank.
I was surprisingly promoted in my work and when I asked why, they said I could see things no one else could. I am sure childhood creativeness out of necessity accounted for this.
I was chasing lightening bugs last week so a friend from France could see what they looked like. Not as easy at 75.
I never saw or heard of a grasshopper chair. But it’s a cute little thing to make! We did all the things Janet mentioned EXCEPT dam a creek. But I played in a creek every chance I got. Ahhh the good old days when people could look you in the eye and carry on a meaningful conversation because you had to have social skills to get by. Now young folks look away like they’re shifty and hiding something and most know nothing about simple etiquette or thinking of others before one’s self…. play outside???? Are you kidding? There’s bugs, it’s too hot or too cold or too windy or too dangerous. I liked danger as a kid.
I’ve never heard of grasshopper chairs, but if I had I’m sure I would have made them too. Reading her blog just reminded me of all the creative fun us kids use to have growing up. We built clubhouses in the woods using sticks, rocks or anything we found to make our walls and furniture. Our things we made from nature weren’t fancy and didn’t last long, but we sure had fun making them. I so enjoy when a writer can bring back good memories while they describe their own wonderful memories of days gone by. Thank you!
It never ceases to amaze me how creative people can be with things in nature. I have never heard of a grasshopper chair but I enjoyed learning how to make one. Do you think kids today would appreciate that or would they just shrug it off and return to their devices? Thanks, Tipper for always sharing these type of things from the past – I wish they weren’t just from the past but were also current ways as well. I yearn for days like that but I fear those type of things are going by the way side. But I thank all of you commenters and Tipper for trying to keep these past ways alive.
My wife remembers her mother making a doll out of a Maypop bloom. Not sure how it was done but maybe others can share how it was done
I’m sure there are a lot of things about Southern or Appalachian lore that I don’t know, but in 65 years, this was one I’ve never seen or heard of! Fascinating and beautiful!
How cute those chairs are and thanks for sharing your friend. We use to play those very games and gosh were they fun. Since we did not live near the city we didn’t have street lights and when it got to dark to play, that is when our curfew was…to dark, can’t see???…inside for bath and bed. I love those tales and enjoy every one. I will visit her you tube. God Bless.
0h what fun! Closest thing I remember was raking pine needlrs into room walls and playing house. We weren’t so creative. The parents loved it tho as all they had to do was rske the rooms yogether and yard looked great
forgot about that one Sheryl! Yes, we used to do so with maple leaves in the fall. Play house & fox & goose with that method. Then we’d rake all the leaves together & jump in them. I used to entertain my daughters with the leaf house game thru the fall, when they were little. Wonder if they remember that? I’ll have to ask them today. I tried to keep this stuff alive for my kids – we live rurally & didn’t have many neighbors.
Mud pies, lots & lots of mud pies! We, too, played outside alot. My mom didn’t let us watch tv (much), even though we had one. It was treated as a family thing to do, with sitcoms on a Friday night with popcorn. So we made our own fun. We also built a lot of Barbie houses/furniture. We went on walks and my mom would tell us the names for wildflowers & fables that went with them – like the story of Queen Anne’s Lace. We had trikes, & bikes and a very basic swingset and I guess we just occupied ourselves like that. I drive by houses with these huge $1000 playsets and see nary a kid using them anymore. Why do parents buy these monstrosities, if they aren’t going to make their kids play outside? I’m so confused by our culture now & often don’t recognize the country I live in. We didn’t have hardly anything & we were happy kids & busy all the time. And when all else failed, there was always a really great book to be read. Never saw those grasshopper chairs – loved them!
Tipper, that’s a new one on me! I’ve never heard of a Grasshopper Chair. I love to hear about the ingenuity of children, they can go outside to play and let their minds go and make all kinds of things and make-believe all kinds of things. It’s all part of the joy of being a child. We seem to lose our imagination when we grow up.
Thanks Janet!