Duck, Duck, Goose
Prepare
Scarf or tissue for the version commonly played in the Middle East, India and South Africa.
Nothing needed for the other version.
Play
The class sits in a circle.
One child (the ‘tapper’) walks slowly round the outside of the circle, tapping each child on the head and saying ‘duck’ with each tap.
The tapper runs all the way round the circle and sits in the goose’s place without being tagged by the goose.
If the tapper succeeds, the goose becomes the new tapper.
If the tapper gets tagged, then – in theory – he should be the tapper again, though it’s nice to appoint a new tapper.
Extend
The same as above except the child walking holds a tissue or scarf and doesn’t speak.
At a chosen moment, he simply drops the tissue behind the child who will chase him.
When the seated child realizes the tissue is behind her, she chases the child – the rest of the game plays out the same.
Some rules say that the seated child cannot look behind her (she must feel with her hands behind her back).
Limited Space
There is another variation where the class sings a song as the child walks round. The child drops the tissue at any point and keeps walking. No one looks behind them until the end of the song. When the song is finished, then everyone looks to see if the tissue is behind them. And then the normal chase.
Play for your topic
Change ‘duck’ and ‘goose’ to action verbs. So the tapper says ‘walk, walk, walk…run’. And when he says ‘run’, the chase begins. You can change ‘walk’ to other action words (e.g. tiptoe, jump, march), and it’s probably simplest to keep ‘run’ the same.
Change duck and goose to any animals. ‘Goose’ can become a predator and ‘duck’ prey, in order to make sense of the chasing (e.g. ‘mouse, mouse, owl’).
You can change duck and goose to any two words, e.g. if doing the weather, it could be ‘sunny, sunny, sunny…rainy’ – and rainy becomes the chase word.