The Both Game — One Thing, Many Groups

A no-equipment talking game that shows one thing can belong to lots of groups at once — then sends you hunting for things that fit two groups at the same time. Perfect for the car, the queue, or a walk.

  1. Warm up with one thing, many groups. Name an everyday thing — “banana” — and take turns saying every group it belongs to: a fruit, a food, a snack, something yellow, something long, a plant. The point is that the same banana is all of these at once.
  2. Keep a loose tally (optional): “A banana is seven things! Can we beat that with an apple?” This makes “one thing, many groups” a discovery, not a test.
  3. Flip to the second game — “find something that is BOTH ___ AND ___.” You call two features from different kinds of groups: “something both red AND round” (apple, ball, tomato).
  4. Switch the pair often — that switch is the real skill: “both soft AND a toy” (teddy), “both an animal AND lives in water” (fish), “both cold AND sweet” (ice cream).
  5. Let your child answer, then ask “why does it fit both?” A quick “an apple is red and round — yes!” confirms they’re holding two features together.
  6. Swap roles — let your child name the object for game one, or call the two features for game two. Posing the puzzle is harder than solving it.
  7. Keep rounds short — a few things, then stop while it’s still fun.

Variation: play it as a riddle — “I’m thinking of something that’s both yellow AND a fruit… and a monkey loves it!” Run narrowing rounds: “name foods… now RED foods… now round red foods.” Or try the what’s-NOT version: “something that’s a food but is NOT sweet,” which forces a re-sort by exclusion.

Requirements

  • Space: Anywhere — indoors, outdoors, the car, a waiting room, a walk
  • Surface: None needed
  • Materials: None required; optional picture cards, or just point at real things around you for a younger or less-verbal child
  • Participants: One adult and one child at least; works well with siblings or a small group taking turns
  • Supervision: Light — it's purely a conversation; the adult guides, models, and keeps it playful

Rationale & Objective

The mechanism here is using language as a tool to re-describe the same thing under different categories: a banana stays one object, but each label (“fruit,” “yellow thing,” “snack”) spotlights a different feature, so the child practises letting go of one way of grouping and taking up another — the heart of cognitive flexibility. The first game builds the insight behind cross-classification — that one item belongs to several non-nested categories at once (Nguyen & Murphy, 2003). The “both ___ and ___” game mirrors the logic of the Flexible Item Selection Task: abstract one dimension, then switch to a second and hold it in mind (Jacques & Zelazo, 2001). Words are not just decoration — labelling the relevant feature helps preschoolers overcome “attentional inertia” and switch sorting rules (Kirkham, Cruess & Diamond, 2003), and between three and five children grow markedly better at using changing verbal cues to re-categorise the same thing (Deák, 2003). Vocabulary and flexible categorising bootstrap each other, and the skill feeds reading comprehension, maths classification, and seeing a situation more than one way. Honest framing — multiple classification is genuinely emerging and uneven at five: many children fixate on a single feature (often colour or the first group named), success is task- and knowledge-specific rather than a global trait (Deák & Wiseheart, 2015), and transfer is mostly near — so keep it light, not a quiz.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: gives one group for a thing and stalls (“a banana is… a fruit”), or fixates on a single feature and resists a second basis even with prompting
  • Developing: names two groups for one thing with light help, and finds a “both ___ AND ___” item when given an easy, familiar pair (“both red and round”)
  • Proficient: independently reels off several groups for one thing and solves most “both… and” prompts across different feature types (colour, shape, use, habitat), explaining why each fits
  • Advanced: fluidly lists many groups, switches the basis of grouping on demand (including “what’s NOT” and narrowing rounds), and invents their own “something that’s both ___ AND ___” riddles

Safety Notes

  • Physical risk is essentially nil — it’s a spoken game with no equipment; if walking or in the car, just keep normal attention to your surroundings
  • Don’t let it slide into a quiz — rapid-fire “what else? what else?” or visible disappointment turns play into pressure and kills the flexibility you’re growing
  • Accept the child’s reasonable groups even when unexpected (“a banana is a boat for my toy”) — the goal is generating groupings, not matching an answer key
  • Keep turns short and stop before fatigue; holding two features in mind is effortful at five, and a tired child defaults to one-feature answers
  • For a child with language delay, scaffold heavily — offer choices, use real objects or picture cards, and let them point rather than speak so it stays a success

Hints

  • Playfulness: use a silly voice for riddles and act amazed at every new group (“a banana is a SNACK too?! What CAN’T it be?”) — wonder, not correctness, keeps a five-year-old in the game
  • Sustain interest: tie it to whatever’s around you right now (the snack on the table, the dog on the walk, a red car) and chase “can we beat our record?”
  • Common mistake: children lock onto one feature (usually colour or the first group said); gently reopen it — “yes, it’s red… now what shape group is it in?” — naming the new feature aloud helps them let go of the old one
  • Limited materials: this one needs none — that’s its superpower; it travels anywhere with zero setup. Add picture cards or point to real objects only if a younger or less-verbal child needs an anchor
  • Cross-domain: feeds vocabulary and oral language (group words), early maths (sorting by attribute, a precursor to class inclusion), science (living/not, habitat, material), and social perspective-taking (one thing, two valid points of view)
  • Progression: name one group → name two → name many → “both… and” with a hint → “both… and” alone → child poses the riddles → rapid category-switch and narrowing rounds (“foods → red foods → round red foods”)

Sources

  • Deák, G. O. (2003). “The development of cognitive flexibility and language abilities.” Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 31, 271–327
  • Jacques, S. & Zelazo, P. D. (2001). “The Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST): A measure of executive function in preschoolers.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 20(3), 573–591
  • Nguyen, S. P. & Murphy, G. L. (2003). “An apple is more than just a fruit: cross-classification in children’s concepts.” Child Development, 74(6), 1783–1806
  • Kirkham, N. Z., Cruess, L. & Diamond, A. (2003). “Helping children apply their knowledge to their behavior on a dimension-switching task.” Developmental Science, 6(5), 449–467
  • Deák, G. O. (2000). “The growth of flexible problem-solving: preschool children use changing verbal cues to infer multiple word meanings.” Journal of Cognition and Development, 1(2), 157–192
  • Deák, G. O. & Wiseheart, M. (2015). “Cognitive flexibility in young children: general or task-specific capacity?” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 138, 31–53
  • Diamond, A. (2013). “Executive Functions.” Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168
  • Head Start ELOF — Approaches to Learning (P-ATL 9: flexibility in thinking and behavior); Language & Communication (vocabulary) and Mathematics (classifying and sorting by attribute)