I’m sure you’ve played duck, duck, goose before, right? We’ve played it a lot. Too much, one could say.

The kids played it so much, in fact, that a couple months ago they became bored with the game. This is stranger than you realize, because it’s not a case of the adults making them do something they don’t like. I know of no adults who will force a group of kids to play duck, duck, goose.

No… what happened is that the kids all liked playing it, but they became bored with the words. They liked the chase, but grew to hate saying “duck” and “goose.”  One of the kids would say “hey, let’s play!” and then as soon as the game started, they’d be bored.

Seeing the problem, I helped things slightly by using the names from the Little Einstein’s TV show instead: “Leo, June, Annie, Quincy, ROCKET!” When I said Rocket, of course, I started running.

This rejuvenated the game for a while. They took it well beyond my suggestion, of course, mixing and matching names from the TV shows, until you really didn’t know what the “Goose” word was. You just had to listen for the change in inflection.

A few weeks later, the two boys approached me. “Want to play Duck, Duck, Who Makes the Bass?”

I didn’t know what they were talking about, but agreed anyway.

We all sat down in a circle and then the oldest got up and started walking around tapping heads. As he tapped each one, he said “Duck, Duck, Who Makes the Bass?” After going around for a while, he tapped my head and shouted “Come and Run with me!”

It was an easy cue to follow.

He didn’t run around the circle, however. Instead, he took off running through the house. Suddenly, I was in a full-on game of tag. When I finally caught him, he pointed at me dramatically “Shoo Fly!”

And then we both walked back to the circle.

We haven’t played Duck, Duck Goose in a while. “Duck, Duck, Who Makes the Bass,” however, has become a standby.