Who Wants to Be A Veggie-Naire?

We played this with a class of 32 fifth graders. They used the cups and baggies to take home all the leftovers they had not eaten to show their parents!

You need:• Whole and diced samples of 4-8 fruits or vegetables of about the same color, some familiar, some new to the children or class.• Paper plates.• Small cups.• Plastic baggies.Mary used rutabaga, turnip, parsnip, potato, apple, boniato and jicama – all white ones. Green leaves or yellow roots and fruits would also work.Show the whole ones, tell something about them and pass them around the room one by one along with a plate of diced samples for the children to taste. Pass a baggie, in case they want to spit it out.Divide the class into two groups, and arrange the chairs so there are at least 4-5 rows of 2-3 students with room for moving in a center or side aisle.Have numbered paper cups of each product. Keep a list of which one is in each number, and put the products in a different order for each team.The first row is “it” on each team. They each get a cup of sample to taste and identify. If they agree on an identity and it’s correct, they get 10 points. If they can’t agree, or don’t know, they can ask their “lifeline,” the second row. Or lifelines may be other teachers who don’t have the answer list. A correct answer with a lifeline earns 5 points; an incorrect answer earns no points.When the first row team presents an answer, they get up and run to the back. Each row moves up one row, and the new first row gets their sample. The game proceeds until all the samples have been tried.The team with the most points wins.To make it more TV game-like, I put the correct identity on one side of a numbered card, one card per envelope per team. As each row presented their answer, a helper opened the envelope, showed the card so the team was sure it was the right number (matched their cup), then read out or showed the correct answer.By CFFH reader Mary Keith