GAME- Donkey. PLAYERS- 3 or more. EQUIPMENT- 4 cards of the same type for each player. ie for 3 players you would need 4 yes, 4 no and 4 maybe cards. grab items- 1 item less than the no. of players. RULES- 4 cards are dealt to each player. each player aims to collect 4 of the same type and discards the cards that they dont want to avoid being the "donkey". each player after answering a question places their discard face down and pushes it towards the person on the left. everyone now picks up their new card. all players now decide on their next discard after answering another question. this continues until 1 player quietly places 4 of a kind in front of them and grabs an item from the middle of the table. when the other players notice this, they too lay down their cards, whether or not they have achieved a set, and grab an item from the table. the player who is last will fail to collect an item and gains the letter D. the first player to be penalised all the letters DONKEY loses the game. NOTE- more cards, such as 'of course', 'not really' etc need to be made and added to the yes/no cards for more ppl to play. at the moment, only a max. of 5 ppl can play. (ie 1=yes, 2=no, 3=maybe, 4=i dont know, 5= probably not....additional 6=of course, 7=perhaps, 8=not really, 9=absolutely...etc. My students (7-13years) love this game. we use normal trump cards, but the yes/no cards would work just as well.

I remember playing this card game when I was a child. (We called it spoons) What a great idea to include yes, no, etc answers!
I have a few questions though. Who asks the questions? Also when you use regular cards, how do you teach them what each phrase the numbers represent?

for the normal trump game, the cards are essentially just a decoy to the learning. they dont have any real meaning. it's just fun to try and be the first to collect all 4, while asking random questions inbetween each discard. for the younger kids, i usually just ask them questions that are valid to the particular lesson being taught or more often, questions that i think are most useful for daily conversation or personal introductions. ie what grade are you in? what's your favorite animal? etc. for the older kids who can read a little more, i provide them with a list of 20 questions that they can ask in any order to the other students and sometimes allow the more able students to make up their own questions to ask the other students before the next discard.

for the yes/no version, you could make up a 20 questions sheet that include "do you...", "can you...", "are you...", "will you..." etc questions and get the kids to ask the person on their left. the kids will respond with either the card type that they want to try and receive or the card type that they want to discard. once everyone has answered, then everyone would discard to the left. if noone gets a set of 4, then the kids would ask another question to each other, followed by the discard and so on until eventually someone would gain a set of 4. kids think its funny when they are asked something like "can you fly" and the response is, "yes, i can". it always helps if the teacher can pull a funny face or something to show how ridiculous it is. this adds to the overall enjoyment of the game.

I like that idea. I never played it as a kid, at least my old brain doesn't recall it.

Now to get my kids to understand it will be a challenge.

Has anyone else played this game? How do you do it with large classes?
Break them up into teams of 4?

Anyway, it's summer school time so my classes are smaller.