Ghost Around the House

# of Players: 3 or more
Equipment Needed: A house without fences or other major obstacles on which kids might be injured
Time per Game: 2-3 minutes
Age Group: 5+

Here's a variation on tag that cured many an afternoon of boredom, played at Nicky Stupakis' house in Pittsburgh. Lots of skinned knees resulted from slips on his concrete driveway, but I can't believe no legs were broken from jumps off his 5-foot high (or was it 4-foot high since I was shorter then?) retaining wall from his front yard to his driveway.

A base is designated (Nicky's back porch) and a person is initially selected as being the ghost. Everybody else sits on base and counts to 30, while the ghost hides somewhere around the house. The people on base announce "here we come, ready or not", and then attempt to run around the entire house and back to base without being tagged by the ghost. Everybody must attempt to make a complete loop around the house -- it doesn't count to run halfway, turn around, and run back to base. After the first person is tagged, the game ends, that tagged person becomes the new ghost, and the game is repeated. If everybody makes it around the house safely, then the same ghost is "it" again, and the game is repeated.