Games for Elementary-Age Children

Look Up, Look Down

• Students stand in a tight circle, facing inward with shoulders touching. A facilitator stands outside of the circle and says "Look down." Students put their heads down. When the facilitator says "Look up," each person looks up at one other person in the circle. If that same person is looking back at him, both of them scream and jump out of the circle. Students then squeeze in to fill the gaps and the facilitator repeats the commands until there is no one left inside the circle. Children enjoy this game because it gives them the freedom to scream!

Toilet Tag

• Toilet Tag is a variation on normal tag, in which one person is deemed to be "it" and chases the other students. In this version, the person who is "it" chases students to tag them. Once a person is tagged, however, that person freezes and becomes a toilet (kneels on one knee with other knee at a 90-degree angle like a chair). To become unfrozen and rejoin the game, another student has to sit on the toilet (on the student's leg) and imitate flushing.

Head's Up, Seven Up

• Approximately one quarter to one third of the students in the class stand at the front of the room while the other students remain seated. When a student at the front commands, "Heads down, thumbs up," all the seated students put their heads down on the table and one thumb in the air. Each of the chosen students then choose another person by tapping him on the thumb, which that student then puts down. Once all the students have returned to the front of the room, they announce, "Heads up, seven up!" The students whose thumbs were tapped stand up and take turns guessing who tapped them. If they guess correctly, they swap seats with the person at the front.

Telephone

• Students sit in an inward-facing circle. The chosen facilitator writes a nonsense phrase, a silly poem verse or wacky short story on a piece of paper. He then whispers this message to one of the students. That student whispers the phrase to the next student, and so on and so forth, until the message comes back to the facilitator. By this time, the message has been so distorted from the original that often it says something else entirely.