Can't resist a list

I don't know how school students fill their free periods/rainy lunchtimes/lazy days close to term's end now, but I'd bet cash money that in 99% of cases it involves screens. Back in my day, we had to be more creative. Hence...

1. Boxes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_and_boxes

2. Calculator races, e.g. continually adding as fast as you could press to a set number. Alternatively, competing to stop the stopwatch function on your digital wristwatch as near to a chosen time as possible.

3. Reading "MAD" magazine or a "Choose Your Own Adventure" gamebook.

4. Chimper chompers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_fortune_teller

5. Pen-flick races. Draw a twisty track on the back of a worksheet, try to negotiate it (pinch top of pen with thumb and one finger, flick pen with wrist) in less moves than your oppo, drop back a step if you stray outside the boundary.

6. Shooting targets with elastic bands launched from the end of a ruler or spitballs blown through a pen tube.

7. Defacing textbooks. How many copies of "Let's Make English Live" were altered to "Let's Make English DIE"? How many educational tomes had words written across their page-ends a la the Redd Kross "Phaseshifter" album cover?

8. Designing dungeons/updating your character sheet.

9. Hand-slapping games - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hands (Cowardly Addster was never a fan.)

10. Trying to sharpen a pencil to the longest point. Especially if there was a motorised sharpener on the teacher's desk!

I could go on and on...

Related to the paper games above, my good old buddy BS gifted me these. Note that along with extensive rules, they also feature different types of playfield pages. I plan on showing 'em to the nephews'n'nieces at Christmas. Assuming, that is, I can tear them away from their screens. These Paper Apps woulda been pure gold in the 1970s-80s. We're talking instant King Of The Classroom material :-)