Freeze Tag Made Easy

Added: 12/07/2005

Party games are to a gathering with children what birthday cake is to a birthday party: a necessity. There is nothing worse than having a group of children who have a lot of unstructured down time between party activities. Quite often this lack of entertainment triggers undesirable behaviors, such as aggressive acting out, and it is hard to help children to turn their behavior around at that time. Fortunately a number of party games, such as freeze tag, will make sure that any lull in activities has the children playing rather than being bored.

Party games are one of the most important aspects of any party. They allow the children to blow off some steam, convert some of the sugar energy they most likely have been consuming all day into positive energy, and it will also help the children to play together and build friendships. Naturally, there are a number of party games children enjoy playing, and some of the favorites are "pin the tail on the donkey," tag, or simply catch. Tag comes in a variety of flavors, but freeze tag is hands down the best version.

The freeze tag game is an ingenious way of helping children to burn up some of the excess sugar they are most likely to consume at a party, while keeping them entertained before the next activity starts. As the name implies, freeze tag is a game of tag that simply relies on one person, usually referred to as "It", to run after and tag the other children. The children who are tagged must freeze in the very position they were in when caught. One variation allows for the children to be "unfrozen" if they are touched by another player. One particularly interesting version allows for frozen players to become "unfrozen" if another player crawls through their legs. There are a number of other tag games, such as shadow tag where "It" tags the other children's shadows, and backwards tag, where all the children will seek to tag "It." Of all these party games, freeze tag is still a tried and true favorite.

An interesting twist to this freeze tag game is the variation played at some of the schools, where the children may play freeze tag during class time. The catch is that in order to become "unfrozen," a child will need to answer the teacher's question. This works especially well for math classes, where the child will need to answer a math question in order to be "unfrozen" and able to participate in the running game again. The more teachers there are, the faster the pace of the game. For younger ages, such as Kindergarten or even Preschool, the game may be played by asking the children to name a word by a certain letter, such as an animal that begins with the letter "z," or any other alphabet challenge that is age appropriate.

For older kids, such as teenagers, or even adults there is another version of freeze tag that may be quite enjoyable! A number of players may begin acting out a scene from a play. In the alternative, they may just begin making up a scene. One or more other players suddenly yell "freeze tag" and the whole scene freezes. They then proceed to tag one or more of the players who are acting out the scene, taking their places. These new actors then attempt to continue developing the scene, and quite possibly end up taking it into a completely new direction. The players, who were tagged, may repeat this process with other players of the scene. Obviously, this version of the game works best when there is a larger group of players.

Obviously, the game of freeze tag is one that offers a large number of varieties, and allows for modifications, no matter what the ages and numbers of players. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why it is an all time party favorite!

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