How to Play Hide and Seek

One of the most fun games for children is hide and seek. There is the simple version where people only hide and they are found. Then there is the version of hide and seek that is mixed with tag. Both version are explained here.

You Will Need the Following:

People

Hiding Places

Choose a Seeker

The first step in playing hide and seek is choosing somebody to find the people who hide. This is often done by playing a rhyming game such as eeny meeny minie moe. However, it can also be done by who is the youngest or who is the oldest.

Decide on Playing with or without Tag

A small space can be used if hide and seek is played without tag. However, a wide space where running can happen is needed if hide and seek is played with tag.

Playing without Tag

The person finding the people closes his or her eyes and counts. Some people say to ten and other to 100. It depends on how fast the person counts and the age of the person. The other people hide. Once the person who is counting has finished, he or she yells, "Ready or not, here I come!"

The finder then finds all the other people. The last person found becomes the person who finds all the people the next time. If anybody cannot be found, the person doing the finding needs to shout, "Ollie ollie oxen free" and the players that were not found reveal where they were hiding. If there were two or more people who were not found, another rhyme or method of choosing who will find people is used between those people.

Playing Hide and Seek with Tag

If you play hide and seek with tag, a "base" needs to be chosen. This is where people run and touch to be "safe" from being "it" which is the person who is finding people. After that, it starts the same with the person who is finding people closing his or her eyes and counting while the others hide. Once the person who was selected to count is done, he or she yells, "Ready or not, here I come!"

The person chosen to find the people then looks for them. Once a person is found, the person doing the finding lets that person know that he or she was found. The person doing the finding tries to tag the hider, but the person who was hiding can run to base and touch it to be safe.

The finder can either try to catch the hider or can let that person be safe and try to continue finding other hiders. However, once a hider is tagged as "it," that person has to be the one to find the people. The original finder stays at base. The tagged finder can then tag other people. Play continues this way until everybody is found. The last person tagged as "it" has to find the people at the beginning of the next round of play.