I Spy Speak (I Spy Snap with a twist)

A few weeks ago I adapted a fun and easy children’s game for some of my little English learners. I like to call it “I Spy Speak!”

I found a set of “I Spy Snap” game cards at the second hand shop but you can also order them from Amazon or pick them up at most toy/game shops. The cards have different pictures on them, very random mixtures of the same objects. You play the  game just like you play the card game “War.”

How to play:

Deal out the cards evenly between the players, and leave them in facedown piles in front of each player. Starting with the youngest (or oldest or tallest or ?), go in a circle flipping the top card in an outward direction  (some children will flip it towards themselves first so that they can get a peek before everyone else, this is not allowed ;- ).  Everyone is looking for two items that are the same, and the first person to see a match must say the correct English word for that item. Clown! Bike! Bee! and so on. The first person to say the correct English word gets all of the face up cards. They should add the newly acquired cards to the bottom of their facedown pile and the game continues. If a player runs out of cards they are not out, because they can still try to be the first person to see and correctly call out a match. If they do this, then they are “back in the game!”  Keep playing until one person has all of the cards. If if looks like the game will never end, set a time limit, and the person with the most cards when the time is up is the winner.

This game works best for 2-4 players. You as a teacher or parent will need pre-teach the vocabulary before the game begins. Since there are several different sets of “I Spy Snap” cards on the market I have not included a vocabulary list in this post.

Happy learning!