Chippenham school pupils are getting the skipping vibe and harking back to days gone by in the playground.

In a group activity designed by the Chippenham Sport Partnership, dozens of children jumped for joy - as well as for mental health to support Hello Yellow day- as part of a two week Team Skip Chip event.

“Skipping is not only a great activity for physical health but also helps improve mental health,” said Jessica Pierce, of the sports partnership.

“This isn’t being run as an inter-school competition but rather a challenge to see how many minutes we can complete as a whole Chippenham Partnership Team and the secondary schools will also be getting some of their classes involved too.”

Abbeyfield, Hardenhuish and Sheldon pupils are taking part.

The idea is that each school will count up how many minutes of skipping they can do as a whole school.

Most of the children in the challenge are using single ropes.

Others are doing skipping moves - but without the ropes - so not quite the retro move to long rope skipping and chants such as ‘blue bells, cockle shells, eevy, ivy, over’.

Skipping games were once the most popular games in Britain but have recently been in decline,

Longrope skipping was one of the most popular games in Britain in the mid to late 20th century.

Mostly played by girls, it is a group activity for three or more. The ends of the rope are turned by two non-skippers while one or more girls skip to the beat of a sung verse or chant, generally performed by all the players except those who are actually in the rope at the time.