Conecta Cuatro - El Juego Tradicional (con verbos)

I was out and about on the web today looking at various games and mining for ideas.  I came across a couple of things, but one thing in particular caught my attention - Connect Four.  It's an old game, really as old as they come - the idea is to get four in a row while keeping your opponent from doing the same.

It occurred to me that this could be accomplished by conjugating verbs on a grid.  Why not?  I see teachers do this with Battleship and Tic Tac Toe all the time.

We are reviewing the preterite in my community college class, so this will be a great way to make the conjugation practice fun!  Click here or on the picture below to download this file.

Students will each need a different color of ink to play.  They decide who goes first, and that person begins by conjugating a verb in one of the boxes.  The opponent does the same afterwards.  Each in turn will fill a box, trying to connect four in a row and prevent their classmate from doing the same.  Traditionally the game is played by two people but, in the case of an odd number of students, I see no reason why three people couldn't play together.

I created a set of four boards that will all fit onto one sheet of paper, to save paper and long copy lines.  They should only play on one board at a time.  (This seems obvious, I guess.  But I have had a lot of unique students trying unorthodox things in the past.  LOL!)

This is a simple idea that I whipped up in about ten minutes.  These particular boards are for a final review of the preterite, but you could easily make them with any verbs and any tense.  Easy, good, fun!  I only wonder why I didn't think of it earlier.

Hasta pronto,

--AnneK