Which Board Games are Readily Available in Spanish?

Shop around to a few online merchants like BoardGames.com and Amazon.com and you’ll see that there are quite a few board games in Spanish available in the United States. The trick is finding out which ones will best suit your Spanish learning or teaching needs.

Spanish board games like Twister and Operation are useful for learning specific vocabulary themes (body parts in both cases). You can broaden these games’ usefulness by adding your own twists. One example would be assigning students in pairs. One student in each pair is blindfolded and then participated in the game as “Twistee” or surgeon. The other student’s job is to direct his or her partner’s actions entirely in Spanish.

The English word-matching game Apples to Apples becomes Manzanas con Manzanas. This is a great vocabulary builder, because players take turns trying to match the most similar words together.

Step things up a notch with Scrabble in Spanish, a Spanish version of Bananagrams, or Cuentamelo, the Spanish version of Baffle Gab. In Cuentamelo, you’re provided with a short list of words (or you can add your own vocabulary list) and then challenged to create a short story out of them. The more words you can use, the more points you get.

Sometimes playing board games in Spanish (assuming that it isn't your first language) isn’t so much about the vocabulary or grammar practice as it’s about the opportunity to interact and practice your conversational Spanish. Give yourself a chance to practice with less vocabulary-intensive Spanish versions of Monopoly and Life. These games are guaranteed to get you talking and laughing, providing a relaxed and friendly environment for learning or polishing your Spanish skills.

While the above games are my favorites for educational (and recreational) purposes, you have a very wide variety of Spanish-language board games to choose from. You might even find a few old favorites. Here are just a few other board games in Spanish you can track down through the major retailers listed above:

• Guess Who?
• Fact or Crap
• Cranium
• Bingo
• Memory

If you don't have a chance to track down Spanish-version board games, you can also keep your students engaged with old-fashioned word games in Spanish.