'Memorama' (Memory) with a twist!

My elementary Spanish students love to play Memorama- and I do, too! It's a great game to review vocabulary, kiddos usually already know how to play (there are a few who don't, I've discovered!), and the prep is practically non existent once the cards are made. The bonus, of course, is that while kiddos are playing, they are learning game vocabulary such as 'Es mi turno', 'un par', 'yupi' and many more, enabling them to stay in the target language.

Over the years I have created many Memorama sets, some of which are always handy for my fast finishers to play with and others which I bring out during certain themes to reinforce the vocabulary we are focusing on. When we play as a whole group, I like to add an additional twist, an additional layer to our playing to kill two birds with one stone as it were.

Instead of setting up the game on a table or on the floor, I use a pocket chart to house the cards. I have written the numbers 1-20 on small squares of paper and affixed them to the pocket chart, leaving space between each number for the cards. How we play:
-I call on a kiddo to name a number- I then flip the corresponding card over and we name the picture.
-I call on a second kiddo to name another number- I flip that card over and we see if we have a match. If we do, '¡Yupiiiii! ¡Un par!. If not, 'Ay, ay, ay' or '¡Caracoles!'.
I continue in this manner for the duration of the game (I usually only play as a whole group for 10-15 minutes as my youngers tend to get squirrelly). We then count up the number of matches and I record how many...sometimes we play to get our best number of matches over the course of a few classes or we play in competition with other classes in that grade level. I love being able to incorporate numbers into the activity- as an alternative, you could affix letters of the alphabet or small pictures of well known vocabulary!

Looking for printable Memorama cards? We've got a set of FREE cards in our TpT store..find them here.