Maze Tag

  1. Tag Games

  • Large Group (10 and up)

  • Grades 1-2

  • Cones

  • 10 minutes or more

Development Goal

To develop strategic thinking

Before You Start

  • Demonstrate safe tagging:
    • Light touch, like butterfly wings on the shoulder
    • Unsafe tags: hard contact that might cause the person being tagged to fall
  • Set up all the cones in a grid formation (i.e. in a square or rectangle with cones an equal distance away from each other).
  • Use enough cones for all the students except the tagger and the runner.
  • Choose one student to start as the tagger and one to start as the runner.

Set Up

Open area with boundaries

How to Play

  • Have all players other than the tagger and runner stand by a cone in the maze.
  • On the leader’s signal, the tagger starts trying to tag the runner.
  • To become part of the maze and avoid being tagged, the runner taps the shoulder of a player in the maze, and takes his/her place by the cone.
  • That player now becomes the runner, until s/he taps another students’ shoulder.
  • If a player gets tagged before getting into the maze, s/he is now the tagger.

Variations

  • If the group is more advanced, eliminate the cones and have players hold their space in the maze without a visual aid.
  • When the leader calls “Switch”, the runner and tagger change rolls; the tagger becomes the runner and the runner is now the tagger.