NAME OF ACTIVITY:  Rock, Paper and Scissors tag

GRADE LEVEL:  Grades 3-12

EQUIPMENT NEEDED:  3 different types of equipment (enough for one third of the class, per piece).  Personally I use onion bags, Frisbees and footballs

HIGHLIGHTS:  Running, dodging, tagging and critical thinking skills. 

INSTRUCTIONS:  Divide the class into three equal teams.  Each team will be given different pieces of equipment, so we will have a Frisbee team, a football team and a sack team.  Each team has one team that they can attack and one team that can attack them (just like rock paper scissors).  In my case, my story is as follows:  the sacks can easily catch a football, so sacks will attack footballs. However, if a sack was to try to catch a Frisbee, the Frisbee would easily slice through the sacks, Frisbees will attack sacks.  Footballs would be able to knock Frisbees out of the air, so footballs will attack Frisbees.  I take a little time here to relate this to science as I will discuss the food chain, as well as predators and prey.  
     On my signal players will attempt to tag their prey while avoiding their predator.  The first team to eliminate all of their prey wins the game.

Variation:  One of my favorite variations is to make this an individual game.  Just as above each player will chase their prey, however, once tagged you must sit down and hold your item in the air.  Players who are still alive may now trade items with any downed player.  This really adds strategy to this game.  The last player left is declared the winner.

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