Students have a partner and will stand in a hula hoop around the perimeter of the playing area with a pile of beanbags, fluff balls, etc in the middle. 

ONE person at a time runs to the middle and grabs ONE item and brings it back to their hoop. Then the other partner goes out and gets one item and brings it back. Partners take turns running to the middle until all the items are gone. Groups count up their their items and then bring them back to the middle and we start over again. For 1st and 2nd graders I will have them skip count by 2, 3, or 10 for point values of their items. 3rd-5th grade will skip count by the weird numbers like 4,6,7,8,9.

Big Reminder: Students can not protect their beanbags in any way from being taken during any version of Hectic. If we see it, we take all their items and throw them back in the middle,

The variations of the game is what make it fun!

1. Stealing- Runner can go take an item from the middle, or they can steal an item from someone who is not their next door neighbor. This tends to make for a longer round because the kids love stealing from each other instead of taking an item from the middle.

I would recommend pre-teaching that stealing is okay and practicing good sportsmanship. If the class doesn't play nicely, we won't let them steal. Plain and simple. 

I also don't tend to do stealing with younger students like PreK-Kinder-1st. Some years my 2nd graders can handle it, some years they can't. 

2. Positive and Negative Points- I made this one up recently and the older kids LOVED IT. When a child runs to the middle they can take a primary colored item which is red, yellow, or blue and take it back to their hoop for a positive point, OR, they can take a secondary color item which is purple, orange, and green and give it to an opponent for a negative point. Once an item is in their hoop, it's theirs.

After all the items are gone, the kids have to figure out their score. I don't tell them how. Some will add up their positives and negatives separately and do a simple subtraction problem. Some will count backwards one point at a time with the negatives. Some children understand that a positive and a negative point will cancel each other out so they will group them in pairs of positive/negative and then see what is left over.

This version is great because you can see their wheels turning. Do they want to focus on getting the positive points, giving negative points, a combination of the two? If they see an opponent with a lot of positive points do they start focusing on giving them negative points  or focus on getting more positive points than themselves?