Climbing trees, exploring the nearby wetlands, and building forts with my friends (and trying hard to avoid the gang of our little sisters five years younger who always wanted to hang out with us).
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At 10, I did a lot of tree climbing, reading (often fairy tales—read pretty much the whole section in the library), playing outdoors with my sibs and the neighbors, basketball, “war,” and passing the football around (I was a pretty good passer, imho. No one bothered to teach me what the line of scrimmage was or told my team about blocking so a pass could get off safely.
Sometimes my folks would take us to neighborhood community pool that they paid an annual admission for before it was torn down to build a library & McDonalds.
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Reading, swimming, TV, and friends everyday. A perfect day would start with cartoons, then the pool with my mom and brothers, then home to gorge on watermelon. We planted the seeds in the backyard and harvested our own after the first few store bought ones. Reading and friends until my dad came home from work, then more swimming with him in the early evening. Dinner, TV, and popcorn in the late evening.
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Is it striking to anyone (this is not a diss on kids today) how physically active, outdoorsy and “with a book” so many of us were?
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Nope - my D is exactly the same way ; )
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We played outside to exhaustion every day. We even played in the rain, floating paper boats down the streaming street curbs. Trying to remember how I found time for all those books,
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I think what strikes me most about the difference between my experience and what my kids experienced is how little adult involvement or direction I had. My parents cared about us, but sent us out to play and didn’t concern themselves with whatever that meant. (Truth be told we weren’t always making good decisions but they were minor transgressions in the scheme of things.)
When my kids were around 7-10, I’d try to send them out, but they often came back saying their neighborhood friends were at a sports practice, away on vacation, playing video games that were “boring”. Or their friends lived far enough away that it required a car ride and some planning by adults to make it happen. And sometimes they’d expect me to tell them what to “play” outside. I would say: I don’t know! Figure it out. Sometimes they did, sometimes I got the “I’m bored” bit. I sometimes took them to the pool or signed them up for camps since I worked and couldn’t play cruise director all the time.
Now that they’re older, they see it as a nice and normal childhood. sometimes they see kids today on iPads out in public and thank me for not letting them spend too much time on their devices. But I think every generation looks upon the next as having an inferior experience due to technology advancements and they develop a romantic nostalgia for the “old days” 
it’s rather cute to see my 16 and 20 year olds already experiencing that for their own childhoods!
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If I were not at away camp, I’d read books for a while in the morning then spend the rest of the day riding bikes or skateboarding around the neighborhood with my friends. I’d come home for a lunch my Mom would prepare for me, then go back out. I’d come in at dusk or when my Mom called down the street. After dinner I’d terrorize my 8 year old sister for a bit then watch TV with my Dad.
My sons were 10 and 6 when we moved to a new neighborhood that was great for playing outside. Lots of parks and trees and grass and lanes that never crossed a street. But our summers are very hot, and they did not know the other neighborhood kids, so the wanted to stay inside and play video games. They were allowed some game time and they had some reading time, but after a while we told them to leave the house to explore the neighborhood and not come back for at least 2 hours. They complained at first about not having anything to do outside but we insisted. They ended up riding their bikes all around and exploring the neighborhood, climbing trees in the adjoining park, making forts in the bushes, visiting their grandparents a few streets away, and meeting other kids.
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1987, I would have been running wild around the farm, riding bike, reading, and playing pretend by myself. Also some TV and Commodore 64 games. I think Mom had started working by then. My sister would have been almost 17 and my brothers older than that but one would have been around some. They did a few things with me. Neighbor kids were 1+ mile away so not really a thing for me.
Oh, I biked and rode skateboards a lot. Our smooth concrete driveway was ideal for skateboards and we had the best trees to climb until my dad had the back yard converted into a huge swimming pool when I was in HS.
Difference for me and my kids is that I worked outside the home. My mom didn’t. So my kids’ memories of summer when they were ten are of day camp 9 - 5 every day for most weeks of summer. Which is one of their favorite things to reminisce about when they get together now.
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I was 10 in 1968. Some of y’all are babies, lol!
Mostly I think I’d be reading, biking, swimming in our pool (a classic sixties above ground with the rickety ladder), or basically hanging out with my sister and my best friend. Never in anyone’s house. Sometimes in her garage because it was cooler on hot days.Or the neighbor’s back porch. Best friend’s mom worked, and mine started to soon after that year.
'68 sticks out in my mind because my very active, young grandmother had unexpectedly died that spring. In my mind, it’s the start of every year feeling worse for a long time–my grandfather died the next spring, definitely from a broken heart. Then my dad lost his job, then got cancer, dying a few years later. Mom went to work and we were basically barely scrapping by. That was probably my last normal-ish summer. In my head, anyway.
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It was 1974, and I was living in Israel (in Jerusalem). The 9th of July fell on the 20th of Tammuz. I was religious, and it was in the three weeks between the fast of the 17th of Tammuz (commemorates the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem in 70 CE) and the Ninth of Av (commemorates the destruction of both Temples). That meant that, like every religious Jew, I would have been in partial mourning, so no parties, and a bunch of other things. You could still go swimming, but that is prohibited in the last nine days.
So a large part of my summer vacations was taken up by this. That Tisha B’Av (ninth of Av) would be the first time that I fasted the entire day (it’s a 25 hour fast, not sunup to sundown). It’s not that easy in the summer in Israel. I would have fasted the previous Yom Kippur, but things happened (“things” meaning a war).
It was a weird time in Israel - it was less than a year after the Yom Kippur war, and the impact of that was still being felt in everything.
It was a Tuesday, so I would have spent the day playing with friends, reading, or chasing reptiles. Maybe all three.
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Phoenix, 1964. My family lived in an older house on a big lot. The Beatles had hit America that spring. My next door best friend and I had transistor radios and tuned into KRIZ radio daily to listen. We both adored Paul McCartney. We spent a lot of time playing with our “■■■■■” dolls. Mine was named Paula. We biked around the neighborhood, read mysteries like Nancy Drew, had kiddie pools that we’d sit in, or if lucky, it was irrigation day. On irrigation day, the city workers came around and opened the gates for the water that flowed through the canal system to come into our yards. We’d splash around the 6 inches of water that gradually absorbed into the lawns. That summer I learned to knit. My friend and I would bike to the house of someone in their Ukrainian community, and my friend would translate the instructions into English for me.
For some reason the little plastic dolls with blue and purple standing up hair have a name banned on CC.
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- I would have been excited about my 11th birthday coming in a few days. We had just moved to a new house that was so cool. It was on a dead end street next to woods, or whatever you call scrubby brush in Texas. There were dry creeks, cactus, a stable with horses, and an abandoned dairy farm. I just loved exploring back there. I spent hours outside. When I got too hot, I’d go inside and read a book in the modern “conversation pit.” Mid century modern! Then Mom would make a wonderful dinner as she did every single night. I had a good childhood.
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Typical summer day at 10: breakfast by 8, then laundry and cleaning the house or yard work, lunch & playing outside or riding my bike to the local pool, and then home 5 pm to cook dinner. After dinner I’d go out to play until dark; wash, rinse, repeat. So pretty much the same schedule as now except instead of playing in the afternoon, it’s running errands 
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Lol on the dolls. The irrigation day thing is so interesting! Is that something that still happens?
Did you mean “trоlls”?
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I am reading the prompt differently, not what you did as a 10 year old X years ago, but what you would do today if you were 10 years old. Both are interesting questions.
Since it is hot as heck, instead of building Lincoln Logs or reading, as a 10 year old today, I’d probably dive into the latest Zelda game (Breath of the Wild) and actually fight the bosses. These days, I let my S do the fighting part bc my fingers are too slow. I just like solving the puzzles, but as a 10 year old, my fingers should be up to the challenge.