Primary

Food Group Relay
Linda Brown, second-grade teacher at the Sabin Elementary school in Denver, Colorado, created this fun game make to sure that her students know the Five Food Groups.

Materials and Advance Prep
• 7 large paper grocery bags
• Marker
• Label one grocery bag "Team A" and one bag "Team B"
• Label the five remaining bags for each of the Five Food Groups - Milk, Meat, Grain, Fruits and Vegetables
• 4 x 4-inch pieces of drawing paper in two colors - 5 per student; make half one color and half another color

What To Do
1. Divide the class into two teams.

2. Provide each student with five pieces of 4 x 4-inch drawing paper, using a different color for each team.

3. Have students draw a food item for each of the Five Food Groups on their drawing paper. Make sure they draw pictures only - no labels.

4. Have everyone from Team A place their food pictures in the bag labeled "Team A" and everyone from Team B place their food pictures in the bag labeled "Team B."

5. Place the grocery bags labeled with the Five Food Groups on one side of the room and have the two teams of children line up on the other side of the room, as they would for a relay. Give each team their bag of food pictures.

6. Have the first player from each team reach into their bag and grab one piece of paper, run to The Five Food Group bags and place the picture of the food in the correct bag. Repeat until all of the pictures have been placed.

7. Check to see that all of the pictures placed in each bag are in the correct food group. On the chalkboard or a chart paper, record tally marks for each team ONLY for foods placed incorrectly. It's easy to identify the teams based on the color of the drawing paper. The team with the LEAST NUMBER OF TALLY MARKS WINS.

"My second graders loved this game so much that we had to play it several times!"
- Linda Brown, Sabin Elementary School, Denver, Colorado