Looking for a go-to “Animal” game in Spanish that can build vocabulary and you can use in various manners? ¡Claro que sí!
I use animal cards to do the following three games. You could use these during a unit on animals in Spanish class or use them as an activity or when you have five extra minutes in a Spanish Immersion or bilingual classroom to spend extra minutes in an educational manner.
I actually do three games with the same cards— I just change it up a little depending on the day, what we are focusing on and the student’s language level. Learning to ask and answer questions in your Spanish language classroom is super important—So, two of the games focus on asking and answering questions. The third way to play focuses on students coming up with similarities and differences.
1. Secret Animal- (¿Cuál animal soy? o animal secreto)
One student is a secret animal. They do not know what the animal is but the rest of the class does. That student takes turns asking questions— Yes/No to see if they can guess what the animals is. The rest of the class answers their questions— either one by one or together. This version is great to do when you have a strong speaker, maybe a Heritage or Native speaker that likes to show off their Spanish skills in class. (If this is too easy, you could have 2-3 students come up and be different animals at once and see who guesses which animal they are first.)
2. Same/Different or Classifying Game
For this game you could choose 2-4 animals from the deck and have students comparing and contrasting animals and/or classifying the animals. If you use teams, (and are working with older students) you would give them 60 seconds to list as many similarities and differences as possible.
For example: The dog and the zebra have four legs. The rooster and the pig live on a farm. The fish and the shark like to swim.
3. 20 Questions. (20 preguntas)
Draw an animal card and have one person (teacher or the student) peek at it. The class takes turns asking Yes/No questions about the animal. They have to guess what the animal is within 20 questions or they lose and you win. This could be done in small groups, whole class or even partners. For this game, I could question by tally marks that everyone can see.
A variety of vocabulary can be practiced with these animal games in Spanish. The most common topics that come up when playing them are:
-Colors
-Body Parts/Animal Body parts
-Actions (fly, swim, run, etc.)
-Numbers
-Places where animals live/habitats (house, ocean, zoo, etc.)
– Adjectives (big, small, long, fast, slow, etc.)
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Do you love to teach about animals with any other games and activities? Feel free to comment below and let us know what works well in your Spanish classroom.
