hopscotches

Hopscotches is the plural of hopscotch, the children's game where players toss a small object onto numbered squares drawn on the ground and then hop through the pattern to retrieve it.

As a verb, hopscotches means to move in a manner resembling the game—jumping from place to place or skipping over intervening points: The documentary hopscotches across three continents.

The word suggests irregular, bouncing progress rather than smooth linear movement.