Hopscotch taught you balance and coordination, a game of jacks or marbles meant you had to get your hands and eyes in sync and elastics and skipping ropes gave you agility and speed.

But as computer games become the activity of choice for young children, are they missing out on important fitness skills?

Tracey Devlin, one of the sports coordinators at Gwynneville Public School, says the increased use of technology means some kids are slow to develop fundamental movement skills.

"Because they're so much more indoor-oriented with their computers and iPods and iPads and stuff, some of their coordination, that hand-eye, foot-eye coordination in some kids, I wouldn't say all kids, but in some kids it isn't being developed as what it would have been before, just from being allowed to play outside," she says.

The last Children's Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2009 found children aged five to 14 spent 28 hours a fortnight watching screens, but only five hours a fortnight riding a bike and five hours in organised sport.

Last year, a study commissioned by Planet Ark and Toyota Australia found 60 per cent of children a generation ago played "street" games such as hopscotch and jump rope, while only 29 per cent of today's kids do.

Less than 20 per cent of children aged between three and 12 have spent time climbing a tree.

Devlin says she sometimes sees these traditional games played at school, but thinks kids may have less chance to pursue them once they get home because of homework and after-school activities.

"The games haven't changed as much as we think, but technology has made a big impact on it," she says. "I know my kids will play, if we have a group of people over, but it's just giving them those opportunities at home."

At Gwynneville Public School, students often play hopscotch or handball on the concrete areas in the morning, but will turn to things like soccer or netball at lunch.

"We try and do lots of fundamental movement skills, that's something that the department is big on pushing, because research has found we're lacking in those at the moment. That's basically your hand-eye, your kicking, your throwing, all those sorts of skills."

As well as improving fitness, all sports and playground games teach important social skills.

"Just learning the benefits of playing a game, your social skills, how to share, winning and losing, all those things are really important as well," Devlin says.

"Competition games, as hard as it is sometimes for children to deal with losing, it's a skill they need to learn for life, that you can't always win, that you need to share things with other people, you need to wait your turn, all those sorts of things, which on a computer a lot of the time if they're playing by themselves, it's me, me, me."