What you need

  1. Pen and paper
  2. List of categories - download resource

Intro

This word association game is the perfect little filler for when you have 5 or 10 minutes spare – and all you need is a pen and paper. Simply surprise the group with a category and get them to come up with as many words associated with it as possible. For example, if the category is ‘fruit’, you could jot down all sorts of words, like ‘summer’, ‘strawberry’, ‘punnet’ and ‘juice’

You can play it 1-on-1, or in a group of around 4 people if you want to add a little competitive spirit

Top tip

Stop the time at 10 minutes instead of 5 if you feel the group needs a little more time to think of the answers

The Activity

  1. Give each person a pen and paper
  2. Tell everyone you’ll say a category and they’ll have 5 minutes to think of as many words as possible associated with it
  3. Say the first category (write it down and put in the middle of the table, if needed)
  4. Start the timer
  5. Move around the room to see how everyone is getting on and give clues if anyone is struggling
  6. Once 5 minutes is up, get everyone to swap sheets and mark each others, giving 1 point for each correct answer
  7. If anyone thinks an answer is wrong, discuss it with group (in a friendly way) to see if it’s allowed or not
  8. The winner is the person with the most answers!

PDF Resource