Apparently they're all still played at schools across Australia, except marbles. The catseyes and bonkers are more likely to come out at home rather than the playground.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne are conducting a national study, Childhood, Tradition and Change to document and analyse the historical development of Australian children's ''playlore'' over 50 years.

It's a follow-up to a similar study in Australian schools by American educator and folklorist Dorothy Howard, who travelled here in 1954 to study how children played.

Dr Howard meticulously documented children's games, rhymes, riddles, jokes and taunts with notes and photographs.

Canberra-based field worker Jenny Gall said Dr Howard's study was in part to determine if Australian children in the 1950s had their own kind of play or were influenced by being in ''an outpost of the British Empire''.

Ms Gall said, ''In fact, what she found was that there were very distinctive play practices, which is not surprising when you think about it, given the climate and the different influences''.

The new study will also look at play in the 1970s and 1980s, with all the material gathered to be archived at the National Library of Australia.

As part of the study, Ms Gall and fellow Canberra field officer Sally Grant have been at the Orana School for Ruldolf Steiner Education, in Weston, this week because of its emphasis on play in its curriculum.

They will be working next month at Ainslie Primary School, one of the schools used in the original study 50 years ago, providing an opportunity to compare past with present practices.

Ms Gall said there was a push in some quarters for play time to be reduced in schools, not only in Australia but in other countries such as the United States, where trees had been cut down in playgrounds in case children climbed them, fell and subsequently sued the school.

Ms Gall said, ''There are some very grim and humourless adults who think kids should be working hard all the time and that humans are just economic units, and if they're not busily engaged doing their maths and accounting and English and learning to be very, very competitive in that academic sense then they're wasting their time. Fortunately, there are a lot of others who think that's a dreadful way of looking at the world. If you don't have creativity, you can't apply whatever academic skills you have.''