Don't Eat ___________!

Ever played Don’t Eat Pete? It has absolutely no point, but kids like it so I used to use it at school for holiday parties every now and again. But a few months ago I ran into a different way to play it for a FHE game: Don’t Eat the Prophet. It goes like this. Take the centerfold of a conference Ensign and put a Skittle (or other small candy or cereal or marshmallows or quarters if you’re feeling rich!) on each of the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency’ pictures. The person going first silently picks a ‘secret prophet’, let’s say President Monson is picked. The next person guesses one of the men, say Joseph B. Wirthlin. Since that is not right, the person who knows the ‘secret prophet’ gets to take the Skittle off of Joseph B. Wirthlin and put it in his pile. Let’s say the next person guesses David Bednar. That is not right so the Skittle goes to the one who knows the ‘secret prophet’. But the next person to guess gets lucky and says “Is it President Monson?” The guesser then gets the rest of the Skittles. Game continues with a different person picking the ‘secret prophet’. You can also use the “Latter Day Prophet” picture from the Gospel Art Kit.

Since I’m not in the teacher-thinking-mode I didn’t connect very quickly the applications for these new rules. But it hit me the other day as one that I can use to help my kids learn academic things in a fun way. When Tessie needs to learn her alphabet (or colors or numbers or sight words), I can pick a dozen or so letters to begin with and make a grid and play “Don’t eat my letter!” I can make one for Chandler to learn his times tables (right now I’m thinking to use it for introduction and not mastery because I’d put answer on the grid and the dialogue would be “Is it 9x3=27?” but you could do it another way too.) Anyway, I just think this simple game can be applied to so many situations. If you try it, I’d love to hear what topics you do and any variations you come up with.