Duck, Duck, Goose

  1. Indoor Game
  2. Tag Games

  • Large Group (10 and up)

  • Grades 1-2

  • None

  • Less Than 10 minutes

Development Goal

To develop social comfort.

Before You Start

  • Gather the children in a circle, sitting down.
  • Demonstrate safe tagging:
    • Light touch, like butterfly wings on the shoulder
    • Unsafe tags: hard contact that might cause the person being tagged to fall

How to Play

  • One child is chosen as the fox and walks around the group, lightly touching each player on the head while saying “Duck,” with each touch.
  • When the child says “Goose”, the person who was touched gets up and tries to tag the fox.
  • Once the fox picks a goose, s/he is trying to run around the circle and sit down where the goose was.
  • If the fox gets tagged, s/he goes into the middle, the cooking pot, for one round.
  • The goose then becomes the next fox and another round begins.

Variations

  • Children stay in the cooking pot until there are 5 people, then they can re-join the game.
  • Duck, Duck Splash: Instead of tapping children on the head while saying “duck”, give the fox a half cup of water to dip their fingers in and flick a bit of water on each person. When the fox wants to choose a goose s/he dumps the remaining water on their head and says “splash!”
    • Allow children options to play without getting wet.