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Cassowary Game

Pretend to be a cassowary looking for some
forest fruits to eat.

What you need:

  • 10 green coloured balls
  • 10 red coloured plastic balls
  • buckets as ‘nests’ for each cassowary


Decide on a good place to play e.g. outside on the grass or in the garden.


The fruit spreader (someone who will not be playing) scatters and hides the coloured balls onto the grass/garden. Those being the cassowaries must not watch while the balls are being distributed.  

Creating cassowaries

Students will pretend to be cassowaries, using only one hand as the beak to pick up balls representing fruit. Each cassowary has their own bucket for a ‘nest’, but must place it on one spot and return there each time with their ‘fruit’.

Fruit finding

Cassowaries will have 2 minutes to find as much fruit as possible to take back to their nest. They can only carry one fruit at a time, put it into the nest, then go off to find their next fruit.  


After time is up, count how many balls in each cassowary ‘nest’. Which cassowary won? Which coloured balls/fruit were easier to find? Why?


  • Use other objects instead of plastic balls. 
  • The number of balls can change depending on the size of your playing space and how many students participate. 
  • The number of minutes given for students to find the balls can vary depending on skill level and size of the space they have to find the balls. 
  • Each player makes their own nest out of sticks and other found natural materials from the ground, before playing.