What's in the fridge?! 'There is/are' board game 🎲 🎲 🎲

Ewa Górna
Apr 23, 2018
3 min read

Updated: May 3, 2019

Well that was a lot, and I mean A LOT, of work 😅 But I am very happy with the final effect which I am going to not only show you but also share with you! 🎉🎉

I'm still working on countable and uncountable nouns with grade 4. We are now covering picture description with "there is/are" putting it all together. I wanted to make something that will really drill this sentence structure. I already have something but it's using "toys" and "furniture" vocab (check it out here) and I wanted something with "food".

I spent one evening sitting in my bed staring at the wall, thinking . . . I knew I wanted to make a board game but I didn't want it to be exactly the same as every other game I have in my classroom, only with different grammar and vocab. It took me two days to perfect the idea but I think I've made something that will get my kids really excited 😁 And here it is:

The game's called "What's in the fridge?!". It's composed of a board, cards, and golden "coins". You need counters and dice to play it. Here are the rules:

you set a time limit on each game, e.g. 10 minutes
you roll the die and move along the board
if you land on a space which says "pick a card" you ... pick a card 😝 from the pile in the middle
your task is to make a correct sentence: ✔︎ means a positive statement; ✘ means a negative statement
each correct sentence needs to start with "there is/are" and include "some/any/a/an"
if your sentence was correct you collect the amount of coins that you card tell you to
if your sentence is incorrect you lose the amount of coins that your card tells you to
after ten minutes, the player with the most coins wins

If it's a bit confusing look at the cards closely:

So the sentences that should be produced here are, e.g. "There isn't a potato in the fridge", "There are some carrots in the fridge", "There is some rice in the fridge", etc.

A correct sentence on this card would give me two coins but if my sentence is incorrect I lose one coin.

What's the QR code, I hear you ask? Why, it's just ... THE ANSWERS!! 😃 Oh yes! You are not needed as a referee in this game, just give it to your students, let them use their phones to check the answers, and go and make yourself a well deserved cup of coffee 😉

The board and the cards are available for you to download. I made the back side for the cards so they're not see-through. You simply print the back side first and then reload that paper into the printer and print the cards on the other side. There are over 200! cards so you can print just one set and a couple of boards and divide the cards among groups of students. Some sentences on the cards may seem silly, like "There isn't a nut in the fridge" but I decided to keep all of the grammatically possible options and let you decide which ones you want to use. I only needed positive and negative statements but I like you so I made questions just for you as well 😄

The coins are made from sparkly golden card. The initial idea was to use a special circular cutter to make them but they turned out to be too big, so they were all cut with scissors. My best mate Barney and my sister Kamila still can't feel their fingers after helping me cut over 400 "coins". Thanks guys 😍

The first lesson in which my kids will get to play this game is going to be a tournament: 8 pairs of students playing for 10 minutes → the winner from each pair plays the winner from another pair (4 pairs) → the winner from each pair plays the winner from another pair (2 pairs) → the final round with 2 students. The pairs will be assigned at random.

After the initial lesson the game will stay on our English shelves 😁