Mad Words is a game where you fill in the blanks of a provided story. Players randomly select words, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns to create a crazy story. Mad Words is a creative game that helps develop thinking and imagination, while also being fun. Create a wacky story that will be sure to get your players laughing.
Materials
- A book, poem, song, or any type of unified text.
- A highlighter or pen to mark the different parts of speech.
- A sense of humor
Mad Words Set-Up
- Mad Words is best played with a small to medium group of people—around 10 players.
- In larger groups, players can be paired up to work together
- Find a used book at a secondhand shop or take one from home—it’s easier to use a children’s book, but any story will work.
- Read through the text highlighting different nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns (optional).
- Create four or five different lists—depending on if you use pronouns—of frequently used nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns.
Remember:
- Nouns name a person, place, or thing. (dog, father, stick)
- Verbs are action words. (jump, sing, run)
- Adjectives are describing words. (hot, dark, funny)
- Adverbs tell how an action is done. (angrily, softly, calmly)
How to Play Mad Words
- Assign one person to mark the words and read the story out loud.
- This person can also choose to reveal the name or genre of the story.
- Be careful not to reveal too much of the story or the new words might match with the text and not be as crazy to read.
- Players choose from the lists of words to fill in the blanks accordingly.
- One person will fill in the story with the selected words throughout the game, making sure not to reveal the story.
- For example, a noun fills in a blank marked ‘noun.’
- Ol’ McDonald had a ___________.
- Ol’ Mc Donald had a teapot.
- Read the whole story out loud.
Variation
- Instead of using premade writing, each player must create his or her sentence to contribute to the game using nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns.
- Players will select a card marked with the words above.
- They will receive four points for every sentence created.
- If a player uses their words to link to another player’s sentence, then they receive double the points—eight points.
- The first player to earn more than 50 points is the winner.
- Choose a poem, song, or excerpt instead of a story. Use the selected text and find words to replace.
