Alien Overview

If you’re looking for new social distant PE games for your gym or the classroom, then I highly recommend Alien! 👽

After playing this activity for the first time, it reminded me of one of my favorite elementary classroom game growing up which was Heads Up Seven Up. 

The original idea for this game came from Asphalt Green, and then I made a few changes to help improve the game play.

I used this as a social distant warm up game for grades 3-5.  I was a little hesitant to use this with 3rd grade, but after a couple of rounds they definitely had the hang of it. 

Important! – When playing this game, I noticed it took about one full round for students to completely figure out how the activity works.  This was with every grade level.  The first time we played I thought it was going to be a complete disaster, but after the first round students loved it and there were a ton of laughs! Moral of the story – BE PATIENT!

If you’re looking for more social distant PE games, you can find my entire collection by clicking here:

How To Play

-What I found worked best for explaining this game, is drawing a diagram on the whiteboard as I was going over the directions.  This way students could see the different jobs and the complete overview of how everything would look.

-To start the game everyone will stand in a circle 6ft apart

-Majority of students will be humans.  Humans will stand around the circle with their arms down to their sides

-Once the game starts, no one is allowed to make any noise

-Select 1 student to be the detective.  The detective will stand in the middle of the circle and will be trying to guess who the aliens are.  

-Have everyone close their eyes and then walk around the circle and tap 2-3 students to be the aliens.  For the first round I usually only tap 2 students.

-Once the aliens have been tapped, have everyone open their eyes

-The job of the aliens is to “zap” the humans.  Aliens zap a human by pointing at them with their finger when the detective isn’t looking. The aliens don’t want to be caught by the detective, so they need to point fast at the humans and then put their arms back down to their side.  

Important! Aliens can only zap one human at a time.  This eliminates an alien being able to zap the majority of the class all at once.  Aliens can’t zap other aliens.  If this happens, no one falls down and the game continues.  Aliens can’t zap the detective.  

-If a human gets zapped, they will fall down to the ground and are considered out

-Humans are not allowed to help the detective 

-The detective is allowed to spin in a circle while in the middle to try to figure out who the aliens are

-The detective is allowed 4 guesses

-If the detective guesses an alien correctly, then the alien will sit down

-If the detective guesses incorrectly, then the game will continue

-You can play until either the aliens are discovered or until all 4 guesses are used

-To start a new round, have everyone close their eyes and choose 2-3 new aliens, and 1 new detective.  

Teaching Tip

-To improve classroom management, I told my classes that in order to have a chance at being an alien or detective I was looking for students who were silent and playing our game by the rules when we started.  This really helped eliminate students shouting out who the alien was once they found out.  

-At the end of the game, it’s fun to discuss different strategies used by detectives and aliens.  Also, by the end of each round everyone is ready to bust out laughing from watching others get zapped. 😂

Fun Add-on

-I created the Zapped hall of fame for the humans who had the best silent acting skills for when they got zapped.  At the end of the game I allowed students to nominate other students for it. 

Phew! I know that was a lot and I don’t have a video explanation for this game, but if you have any questions please feel free to either comment or contact me using the link above, and I would love to help out! 😄

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