5 Spanish Board Games Your Kids Will Thank You For
The best Spanish board games are fun and provide learning opportunities for children of all ages. Back when I was a kid learning English, my teacher and I would play Monopoly with one special rule: no Spanish allowed! It was a nice thing to do once in a while, and it helped my practice when I learned without making it dull or boring.
Nowadays, most if not all board games come with English and Spanish versions alike, so learning with Spanish board games is more about setting up the right environment for learning. Some games on this list are by Spanish authors, but the real learning comes from encouraging the use of Spanish during playtime. Let’s take a look at some of the best Spanish board games to play!
1. Skull
Age: 7+
Skull is an adaptation of a classic game played widely in Central and South America called Liar’s Dice. This simplified version of the game features coaster-like cards for each player to place on the table. Each player takes turns placing down one of their cards. The cards can have a flower or a skull, and when a player feels confident that they can guess how many flower cards are on the table, they can say that number out loud.
The other players can raise the number, or call their bluff. When a bluff is called, the player has to flip the cards on the table until they reach the number they said to win, or flip a skull card and lose. If you lose, you have to discard one of your own cards for the rest of the game. The first player to reach two victories wins!
This game creates fun and tense moments whenever a player is flipping cards, and it’s engaging enough to be fun for the whole family. You can get Skull on Amazon, or you can make your own cards at home if you’re feeling thrifty! Just make sure you make the top side of them all the same, to avoid cheating.
How to Learn Spanish With Skull
This game is great to practice numbers since counting is a big part of the game. When players are calling out cards, the whole table will be counting in Spanish. When a player calls a bluff, the other player has to count by themselves. Use this mechanic to your advantage and practice counting in Spanish!
2. Dixit
Age: 7+
Dixit is one of my favorite Spanish board games. It combines imagination and deduction by allowing players to come up with creative phrases to match beautiful sets of cards. Every turn, one player has to choose a card and make up a phrase that goes with it. Then all other players choose a card of their own and they’re all shuffled together. Then, each player—except the one who came up with the phrase—has to vote for the card that they think is the one chosen by the phrase giver. Whoever guesses correctly gets a point, but if they all guess correctly, the phrase giver takes a penalty, so don’t make it too obvious!
How to Learn Spanish With Dixit
Dixit is focused on short phrases, so using Spanish for the phrases is a great opportunity to incorporate learning into your Spanish board games night! This game works best for intermediate speakers since they’ll know more vocabulary, but they can also learn new words in the process. Having to think about what the words mean will help them commit it to memory without even trying to.
3. Monstruo de Colores
Monstruo de Colores is one of the best Spanish board games for kids out there. It’s a great tool for parents and psychologists who want to teach children about emotions. Emotions can be complex and tangled but, with a little help, we can express them and learn more about ourselves.
In this game, the monster has to move along a board with different colors. Depending on the color the monster lands, the player who rolled the die has to tell a story that made them feel an emotion corresponding to each color: joy, calm, anger, sadness, fear, and love. All players win if they manage to unravel each emotion and place them on a shelf. But beware! Sometimes there are obstacles to expressing our emotions, and you might find tangled feelings on the shelf that you’ll have to remember if you don’t want to start over.
How to Learn Spanish With Monstruo de Colores
Monstruo de Colores, as well as the children’s book that goes by the same name, was made by Spanish author Anna Llenas. Depending on the age of your child, you can use this game to teach them about emotions in Spanish, or go a step further and tell the stories in Spanish, too!
4. Lotería
This is one of the classic Spanish board games. It’s commonly played in towns and gatherings all over the continent. Its premise is simple: bingo with pictures. However, the fun twist is that the announcer has to say the words for each picture that comes up. Usually, they accompany each picture with a sentence describing it. The best announcers know how to make this entertaining by poking fun at the cultural aspects of each card. You can get a set for real cheap, so this can be a great option for your next family dinner.
How to Learn Spanish With Lotería
You’ll get plenty of useful vocabulary from this classic game! The announcer can describe the pictures in English or Spanish depending on the level of the other players.
5. Mysterium
Age: 10+
Mysterium is the lovely fusion between the classic game Clue and the aforementioned Dixit. Players must take the role of psychic mediums that have been hired to solve a murder most foul. One of the players is a ghost and is tasked with giving cards to the mediums as clues to solve the case. However, ghosts can’t talk, so the ghost player has to keep silent for the whole game.
This game is a fun way to learn how others think. Some people prefer to link to objects, while others focus more on abstract ideas.
How to Learn Spanish With Mysterium
Mysterium, much like Dixit, is focused on deductive reasoning. This game will require a Spanish speaker to guide the process along, but the amazing amount of images gives the perfect opportunity to teach vocabulary to your child. While the theme of the game is better suited for older kids, the images are creepy at worst and gorgeous at best. There is a lot more than weapons and places, you can teach about animals, professions, and everyday objects too.
Learn While You Play
Spanish board games are a great tool to learn a new language. Sometimes, a little extra engagement is all you need to motivate your child to speak Spanish. However, sitting to play board games consistently can be difficult and even tiring sometimes! Having board games is not enough to give the Spanish education your children deserve. The best way to learn Spanish is by speaking it with a native speaker. Our certified Spanish teachers are trained to teach Spanish to children, and if you take a free class with us they’ll be speaking Spanish from day one!
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