#WordWednesday

"Categories" is a game in which you try to think of words which start with a specified letter and which fit a particular category. Combinations of more than one word are acceptable (as long as they are listed in a dictionary), so "ice hockey" would qualify as a sport starting with "i," or "hockey" as an "h" sport.

The commercial version is called Scattergories, but you can play this game without spending any money. It's a good car game (talking, no writing), brain waker-upper or group game with family, friends, students…whomever…and has any number of variations to suit your group, location and time frame. When I played with my students, one person opened a book to a random page, pointed at a letter, and that was the letter we had to use with our predetermined categories. Sometimes we'd have a time limit, sometimes not.

So here are a few starter categories. Give it a try if you like word games.

Name six (or 10 or 12?) animals starting with the letter A.

Name six types of furniture starting with B.

Name six (or 15?) birds starting with the letter C.