This game is great to practice focusing on one other player while also practicing safe tagging. It is a great game for both large and smaller groups. In this game, players practice safely tagging others as well as navigating a group that is working to complete other goals.
Cyclops Tag
11+ Players
Grades 3-5
None
10-15 Minutes
Goal
The goal is to tag or evade your partner and switch roles.
Before You Start
- Demonstrate safe tagging:
- Light touch, like a butterfly wings, on the shoulder, upper arm or upper back.
- Unsafe tags: hard contact that might cause the person being tagged to fall.
- Practice using one hand to completely cover one eye, and using the other hand to create a circular “viewfinder” held up to the other eye.
- Review the play space boundaries, and how to move safely through the space.
Set Up
- Identify a clearly defined space that players can move throughout freely.
- Divide players into pairs.
How to Play
- Have each pair of players determine who will begin as the tagger and who will start as the runner.
- To begin the game, give the runner five counts to move away from their partner. After five counts the tagger may begin trying to tag their partner.
- When moving through the space, both players will cover one eye with their hand. The other hand should make a circle and be used as a viewfinder, limiting their range of vision.
- When trying to tag their partner, the tagger can use the hand covering their eye, but must keep their eye closed and continue to look through their viewfinder.
- When the tagger tags their partner, they switch roles.
- The new tagger should give their partner five counts to move away before trying to tag them.
- Continue playing, switching roles each time the tagger is successful, until both partners have had a chance to be the tagger, or until time is up.
Variations
Add a villager if there is an uneven number of players. The villager’s job is to help hide people from their tagger.