As students enter the gym, tell them that they are now at the North Pole. Designate two students to be Grinches, two students to be reindeer, and the rest of the class to be elves. The reindeer will wear antler headbands and the Grinches will wear green pinnies and carry green foam noodles to be used as tagging instruments.

Review safe tagging, fleeing and dodging skills. Tell students that the Grinches hate Christmas and want to stop the elves from working. The Grinches will be chasing the elves and will say “stop working” as the elves are tagged. The elves need to stop and freeze until a reindeer comes by to unfreeze them. The reindeer will say “get back to work” as the elves are tagged. Tell the students that one of the goals is to keep everyone moving, so the reindeer have to be unfreezing the elves as soon as they can!

Direct the students to perform specific locomotor skills. Every few minutes, switch locomotor skills and switch roles so that others have the opportunity to be a Grinch or a reindeer. Playing music from the movie “Grinch” would be a good addition to this type of game and a good way to signal the start and stop of each locomotor skill.

If pedometers are used, the number of steps can be recorded to measure the amount of physical activity performed.

Cooperation can be assessed by asking how well everyone worked together to unfreeze the elves.