Grade Level: First Grade through Third Grade

Materials Needed: Flash Cards with pictures of food, colored flash cards with names of food groups.

Set up: Place the flash cards with pictures of food upside down in center of the room. Tape colored flash cards with names of food groups on the classroom walls.

Procedure for activity:

1. Place students into groups of three and have them sit next to each other.
2. In each group, give each student a number (1 - 3).
3. Student #1 will run to the center of the room and get one flash card.
4. Student #2 will look at the flash card, determine what food group for that food and tell student #3.
5. Student #3 will take the flash card from student #2 and run to the colored flash card that corresponds to the food group.
6. After checking to see if students are correct, teacher collects flash cards and places them back in the center of the room.
7. For the next round, Student #2 gets the flash card, Student #3 determines the food group and Student #1 runs to the food group card.
8. For the next round, shift the roles of the students once again.

Benefits: This activity promotes teamwork, communication, etc etc etc And this activity does lots of other good stuff for kids and everyone gets to participate one way or another - even the lazy ones - and if someone cannot run that day then that kid can just sit and do the "determining" stuff and if another kid can't read because he's special ed or just plain dumb then he can be the "runner" and so on and so on.