Educator Idea File: Category-Style Game

This is a game you can play with any topic - nutrition, fad diets, diabetes, heart disease, wellness, fruits and veggies, etc. It can be played easily with any age group and is from Kathleen Upton, RD, LMNT.Each player gets a sheet of paper and divides it into 2 or 3 sections for 2 or 3 questions. You can also increase or decrease the number of sections as needed. Here are some ideas for questions you can use to have fun with kids or adults for your next class or supermarket tour. We find them to be a great icebreaker for the start of a presentation and you could time it to see how many they can come up with on their own for 2 minutes. It can also be a multi-question game that is played for a whole class.Here are the ideas for the questions with an emphasis on fruits and veggies:1) name a brown fruit2) name a purple vegetable3) name a fruit you don’t have to peel or4) name a covering you can eat5) name a fruit from a tropical climate6) name a vegetable that starts with the letter c7) name a dark green or orange vegetable8) name healthful whole grain foods9) name healthful milk category foods10) name sources of saturated fat and cholesterol that increase cholesterol in your blood11) name which foods are high in fiberKathleen says she has many questions that she can ask on various topics - a great idea for presentations that pop up quickly. Here is what she says for how they play, “Any way we either do this as part of our grocery store tour if it is kids with their adult parents, or we use food models placed around the room (usually hidden somewhat), or we just ask them to list on a piece of paper the answer to our questions. The person with the most answers is the winner. If they write it on a piece of paper, the person with the most unique answers is the winner. If we play it using food models that we have hidden through out the room, it is the person with the most “tangible” answers who wins.”