Spoons: A Vocabulary Card Game in French, Spanish, German, and More!
Spoons is a fun card game that’s great for reviewing vocabulary in a foreign language. It’s sure to be a hit with your kids! Here’s how you play:
1. Prepare a deck of cards. There should be 26 vocabulary words, and 26 corresponding pictures. The preparation of the cards is an effective learning strategy in and of itself.
2. Form groups of 3-6 players. Give each group one deck of cards and some spoons–one less than the number of people in the group.
3. Spread the spoons out evenly in the middle of the circle of players. The dealer shuffles the cards and deals 4 to each player. The object is to get 2 pairs: picture/word, picture/word. Remaining cards are placed face down in a pile by the dealer.
4. To begin the game, the dealer draws a card from the top of the pile, looks at it, and either swaps it with one of the cards in his hand or places it face down for the next player to pick up. The card (or its “swap”) travels around the circle. The last player places it face down in a discard pile.
5. The moment the dealer discards one card, he picks up another one, so that several cards are in play at the same time. This is a fast moving game! When the dealer runs out of cards in the original pile, he begins to draw cards from the discard pile.
6. As soon as someone has two picture-word pairs, he picks up a spoon. This can be a quick grab or a sneaky, subtle move. When the other players realize that a spoon is missing, they must try to get a spoon, too. One player will be left without a spoon.
The game can end here, or you can keep score by awarding the player sans spoon the letter “S”. If a player loses in the next round he would get a “P”, and so on until he spelled the word SPOON (or preferably the word for “spoon” in French, Spanish or German.) The first to spell the word is out and the game is over.
Kids are focused and motivated by this card game. It’s fun in the classroom or around the dining room table. Learners are processing the meanings of 26 different words during play, and making the powerful connection between picture/word. No translation necessary!
Another fun language learning card game is Go Fish. Do you have any other favorites that get kids talking?
Photo Credit: by Diego Medrano at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1102169
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