Egg-streme Matching Players match state and capital names when they shake an egg carton and have the marked tokens fall into designated spaces. Age Range: 9 to 12 Skill Used: knowledge of states and
capitals Number of Players: 2 to 4 Noise Level: moderate Activity Level: low Materials: egg carton, 50 disk-shaped
tokens, game sheet, list of state abbreviations, answer sheet, paper and pencils with erasers
Setup Randomly paint sections of an egg carton as follows: three green sections, one red section, and two yellow sections. Leave the remaining sections unpainted. The two-letter abbreviations for each state in the United States should be written in permanent marker on the tokens. The game sheet needed to play the game shows all the state capital names in alphabetical order with a blank space for the state abbreviation. The list of state abbreviations should be copied and made available to players to determine the name of the state from the abbreviation. The answer key with the correct pairs is also needed to score the game, but this key is not made available as the game is being played.
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How to Play To begin the game, all 50 marked tokens are placed in the lid of the egg carton and the carton is closed. The player chosen to go first shakes the carton and flips it over to allow the counters to fall into the variously colored sections of the container. Once the carton is turned upright, no more shaking should be done and the carton is set down and opened. The player collects the tokens from the three green sections and records the names of the states they represent next to the corresponding capital names on his or her game sheet in pencil. If the player doesn’t know the correct match for the disk, he or she can mark down a guess or choose to skip it. The disks in the red section are collected and these state names are erased from the player’s sheet if they were obtained on a previous turn. All of the disks that fall in the yellow spaces are marked on the player’s sheet, but they must also be shared with one other player of his or her choice. Once recorded, all the tokens are returned to the carton for the next player’s turn. Play continues to the left with each player shaking the carton and recording his or her matches. The first player to make 25 matches on his or her game sheet is the winner unless an error or incorrect guess is found on the game sheet. In this case, the player is disqualified and play continues until the next person completes 25 matches.
101 Great Classroom Games