Practices: vocabulary, associative thinking, hand-eye coordination
1. Have all students sit in a circle. Use a fake apple (or tennis ball etc.) and toss it underhand to a student while you say one English word.
2. The student then throws the apple to another student and says a different English word in the same category as yours. If the student being thrown to drops the apple/ball, then he/she is out. If a student repeats a word or says a word not in the same category, he/she is also out.
3. The game keeps going until you have one winner.
It might be useful to write the category on the board
Category suggestions:
‘Animals’: cat, bear, snake, frog, dog, mouse, bird etc.
This game can be modified for more advanced students by narrowing the categories even further for example ‘Animals’ can become ‘Mammals’ or ‘Reptiles’ or ‘Insects’ or ‘Sea Creatures’ or ‘Pets’ or ‘Birds’ or ‘Predators/Carnivores’ or ‘Herbivores’ and so on
‘Plants’: trees, grass, flowers, bushes, ferns etc.
Again, you can increase the difficulty of the game by narrowing the category to ‘Trees’ or ‘Flowers etc.’
‘Fruits’: apples, oranges, bananas, grapefruit, grapes etc.
Challenge categories can include ‘Citrus’ or ‘Berries’ or ‘Red (or other color) fruits’ or ‘Sour fruits’ etc.
‘Vegetables’: broccoli, carrots, spinach, cabbage, peppers, sprouts etc.
Challenge categories can include ‘Green vegetables’ or ‘(color) vegetables’
Special thanks to Kim S.