Fruit Basket is a wild and exciting game for those under the age of about twelve and, occasionally, for adults as well. It is a great game for teaching new vocabulary to children in a fun and interactive way. It is best played after new word sets have been introduced and reviewed several times in order to ensure that the players can recognize the new words without having to have them repeated.
Every student is assigned a fruit. Decide
beforehand which fruits are to be included, or you might get the one kid that chooses
kumquat or
rambutan, while everyone else picks banana. You want a variety of about 6-10 fruits, with at least three students per fruit. Younger children will enjoy drawing pictures of their fruit and these drawings can then be tied around their necks facing outwards for everyone else to see. I once walked into a classroom full of second graders who had their pictures attached to their foreheads with head bands. This is another (incredibly
cute) option.
Fruit Basket is best played with a large but managable group of kids. You wouldn't want to play with any less than 16 kids, but once you get into the 60s or 70's, expect
fights and tears. If you have a very large class, you always have the option of separating your students into two or more large groups.
All players, except one, sit in a circle on chairs. The student in the middle calls the name of a fruit. All players with that fruit must stand up and change seats with one another. The player in the middle also scrambles to sit down, so that there is always one player left standing. The player in the middle can call the name of more than one fruit at a time, or for a really wild time, call fruit basket. When fruit basket is called, all players must change seats. Believe me, this is the kind of chaotic fun that your elementary school students will love and the younger the kids are, the longer this game will entertain.
Instead of fruits,
colours,
numbers, days of the week, months of the year,
animals (basically any vocabulary set) can be used. For
advanced and older students,
adjective basket is yet another possibility. The student in the middle calls out descriptions like "long hair," "
blue eyes," or "wearing a green shirt" and everyone who fits that description must change places.