We ran a quiz every Monday morning at our residential aged care home, and our senior residents were always sharp and fiercely competitive! This brought me to the idea of the Staff vs Residents Quiz Challenge; the residents were super keen to take on the staff. So, we organized two teams, the Residents & the Staff.
We always started with a large whiteboard and a word search game taken from the morning’s paper. Someone laminated all the letters in bold black lettering and placed them on the board. The goal was for everyone to try making as many words as possible.
When they got stuck, I would do a few short quiz questions on different subjects, I would have them call out the answers loudly. Then we would return to the word search and try to make more words.
How to Play a Staff vs Residents Quiz Challenge
On the whiteboard, I stuck six large envelopes all labeled with different subjects:
- History
- Famous People
- Music
- Movies
- Geography
- General Knowledge
We tossed coin heads or tails to see which team would start first.
The first team would pick an envelope from the whiteboard, each team had a designated leader. There would be 10 questions in each envelope on that particular subject.
The team could discuss the answers they thought were the right ones between them and then their designated leader would call out the answer.
If the answer was incorrect then the other team could have a go at answering the same question.
Each correct answer scored one point. When all six envelopes were finished the team with the most points was declared the winner and they were presented with a trophy that sat in the facilities foyer for all to see.
It was always a good challenge and competitive with the facility Manager, Chaplain, and other staff making up a team. The winners every time we played the quiz challenge were the residents, they remained undefeated making them feel very proud.
A very worthwhile activity to run every few weeks between the general quiz morning.
