Fox Hunt/Squirrel Scramble

To develop evasion skills and strategy.

You need players to be trees, players to be squirrels (half of tree total plus a few) and a few players to be the foxes.
For a group of 22, assign 12 kids to be trees.
Each of those players will pair up with another to be one tree, which will give you 6 trees.
There will be 8 squirrels. This is to create the problem of not enough trees for all the squirrels.
There are also two foxes to catch those loose squirrels.
For a group of 40, have 22 kids be trees giving you 11 trees, 14 squirrels, and 4 foxes.
Demonstrate safe tagging

Establish boundaries.

The trees go out into the play area first.
Two people become a tree by standing face to face and holding hands with arms raised over their heads.
Once the trees are into position, you send the squirrels out to find a home.
A squirrel must stand underneath the raised arms to be in a tree.
If a squirrel has no home he or she goes to another squirrels home and taps them on the shoulder.
That squirrel must leave the home out the other side of the tree and find a new home.
Give the squirrels a few minutes of establishing a cycle of tree swapping.
Once this has been done, send in the foxes and they are to tag any loose squirrels.
Those squirrels tagged either wait until the next round of play or do an exercise (jumping jacks, push-ups, etc.)
After a few squirrels are tagged, start to take away (cut down) trees thus making the game more challenging.