Spanish Board Game – Race to Madrid | Easy to Learn Words, Grammar, Verbs | Fun for Adults, Kids, Beginners, Classroom | 4 Decks Dynamic Flash Cards

This game is wonderful! I bought the Race to Madrid version, which contains packs 1 - 4 and a board for the game, which is basically just a visual way of keeping the score. We moved to Spain in April. Both my husband and I had in the past reached intermediate level in Spanish, and the kids, aged 8 and 14 had had a few months of lessons with a tutor once a week. The area we live in has a few English couples, but we are the only English family in the village, so the ability to speak Spanish is key, as well as both kids attending Spanish schools here. Originally, we employed a local teacher to teach our teenager, but this didn't really work as in typical teenager form, she resented having to learn a language! Then I discoverd Kloo! We have played a game every day, starting with pack one, then as we mastered the words, we've moved onto pack 2, and plan to do this with all the packs, then jumble the packs up, to make things harder. Things I like about Kloo! 1) Everyone can play the game, without those at a higher level having too much of an unfair advantage. 2) It's simple to play. No complicated rules, so you can just concentrate on the language. 3) You can tailor the game to your own needs ie there are more games that can be played with the cards which are explained on the Kloo website, which is free to access. 4) My kids BEG to play Kloo every day, so it must be doing something right! 5) You really do learn the language and faster than any other way I've known, and I've tried a fair few language tapes. 6) The board game makes scoring easy, and the result at any given time visible! We usually play at least 2 games to get to Madrid, which takes us between one and two hours, so it's not a long drawn out game, which keeps the children's interest. I don't understand why Amazon have added packs 3 and 4 with the Race to Madrid game, as they are already included in the Race to Madrid version. Clearer labelling on the part of Amazon required I think! It's not a reflection on the game. 7) Each pack only has 2 persons in the verbs, so it makes it easier to pick up verb conjugations. In pack 1 for example, all words are "I" or "we". In pack 2, both singular and plural forms of you are used, but not I or we. My teenage daughter was struggling with Spanish verbs, but Kloo has definitely helped. Small criticisms of Kloo: 1) At the moment, only the present tense is covered in the game. I understand though that very soon, past and future tense packs will be available on the website. I guess later, this could be expanded by Kloo to include other tenses as well, which would make it a game for even advanced language learners! 2) In the game, every sentence has to have not only a verb and a noun, but an adjective, yet in real life, sentences don't have to. The cards have coloured arrows on them, indicating which type of card can go next ie verb, adverb adjective or whatever (I'm no language expert)If you get dealt a hard with a lot of one type of card, and can't make a "proper" sentence, then you are forced to just play one card. For example, if your hand is lacking any adjectives (describing words) then you can only play a verb, or throw away any single card. 3) At the moment, the vocab is limited, though again, I understand there are plans in the not too distant future to add more vocab packs on the website. 4) It's a shame that the board seems to bear no relation to the geography of Spain. It would perhaps add interest if some attention had been paid to putting small symbols for the different places on the board, and having a larger variety of places from around Spain on the board. Northern Spain is very poorly represented for example! If you are looking for a way to learn a language, pain free, then you should start here! I really can't recommend it highly enough! Before we got the game, I suspected that my kids grasp of Spanish was better than they allowed me to believe, and this has just been verified! After all, they have been attending Spanish schools for a term, so must have picked some words up from their friends! KLOO's Learn to Speak Spanish Language Board Game - Race to Madrid

When I saw this game I thought it'd be perfect as I'm learning Spanish. It's got cards for all the building blocks of a sentence and every Spanish word has its meaning given somewhere else in the pack. So we found that by playing it a couple of times you quickly got the hang of some vocab just by looking at your cards. Not sure how much use its be to build complex sentences later but for now it's a good game to pick up and remember the basics.

We really enjoy the Kloo range of language learning products, and decided to try the Race to Madrid board game to add to the fun. This is another well designed product that offers the same great format you will soon learn to love. The twist that keeps the children interested is the classic race to the centre style board. Choose your coloured car and you are ready for the off. There are four decks of cards available in the game, People, Clothing, Eating and Drinking, and Everyday Objects. The most useful categories for everyday interaction in a foreign climate! This is perfect for learning conversational Spanish. The children who are 16 and 11 were really engaged and the competitive sibling rivalry soon kicked in, each being determined to win. It was actually the younger child that cottoned on to looking at the cards in his hand (as yet unplayed) to assist him with translations, as well as looking at the cards already in play. He was soon streaking ahead on the first attempt. The object is to build sentences using the clever colour coding to help nudge you in the right direction. Points, which equate to squares moved, are accrued by constructing the sentences and then by translating them. So a three card sentence can potentially accrue you 6 moves, IF you can translate it successfully! There are added action squares to further increase the fun, and give players a chance to earn extra moves forward, and even in one case send another player back 2 if they fail to translate the card. The game is really good fun, we were surprised how much time we had been playing for, an hour passed really quickly and the children were still really engaged and determined to win. I think we play slower than the rules suggest but the fact that the time was taken up with lots of discussions about the words and the structure is definitely good in my book. They were animated and happy, and more importantly they were learning. I am sure most school lessons are not met with this much enthusiasm. There was some argument over the occasional word, specifically pronunciation but we were able to clear that up really quickly because the cards do help you with that, it is just simple phonics pronunciation. As the game progressed, even the first time we played it, I was hearing shouts of ‘oh I know what that means’ and then they would start repeating to each other what they already knew - which was helpful repetition. My 11 year old has repeatedly referred to various food items in Spanish since we started playing, specifically cheese and chicken - he is very impressed with himself and whats more he is learning words as second nature. Overall this is another great option in the Kloo range, we really love the products and thoroughly enjoy the learning experience.

A really good idea but very disappointing. I bought this for my husband who has some knowledge of the Spanish language and wanted to advance this. However neither of us were able to understand the rules of the game and have given up!

I bought the complete game for a Primary Spanish club and the children loved the idea of playing a real BOARD game. However they quickly got BORED with the rules (children are not good at reading instructions I find) and the cards did not give enough language help for complete beginners. I simplified the rules and produced my own cards with pictures so that the children could learn the vocabulary. In time I hope we can use the original resource. Am not sure it was worth the money although with my cards the game works well.

I hadn't intended to write a review until I have had a chance to try it with my class, but since you ask

I bought the Spanish Kloo board game (Race to Madrid) after feeling a little disillusioned with a recent educational DVD that my kids just weren't interested in! ( As a languages graduate, it has always been my aim to get my own children ahead with their French and Spanish). I found Kloo purely by accident while searching online for language resources, and decided to give it a go based on its very positive reviews, and am so glad I did - I am genuinely delighted with it so far! Apart from being a very enjoyable game in its own right, after a very short time my children have learnt almost all the words in deck 1 which relate to food and drink, ordering in a restaurant etc. They can build sentences using all the relevant parts of speech and they and have an increased awareness of masculine/feminine nouns, placement of adjectives, verb conjugations (1st person singular and plural only in deck 1 - which is perfect) not to mention a varied and useful vocabulary that is relevant and fun for children. I have also brushed up on my own, slightly rusty, Spanish and my children love trying to catch me out! We don't play the whole game every night but rather just leave the game out and continue where we left off, meaning that there are no battles over going up to bed as they can't wait to play each night. My son, who has additional support at school with his English, finds this game motivating and enjoyable - the results are better than I'd even hoped initially. His pronunciation needs a bit of work but with the phonetic spelling on each card, even this aspect has been thought of and addressed in a way that allows children to sound authentic. I have now also bought the first two French card decks, however, I just want to focus on the Spanish for another week before we swap. I am pleased to see that the French deck 1 corresponds quite closely to the Spanish, which means we already have plenty of clues and a good head start. Overall this is a fantastic game and I wish teachers would use it instead of simply teaching a string of sentences without any explanation of how they are built up. I'm certain that by using this as a teaching resource chidren would learn much more effectively and be more inspired. Just need more hours in the day to play it. My favourite purchase in a long time.

This game is a load of rubbish! Me and my boyfriend wanted to expand our basic knowledge of Spanish. We did not understand the point of the game and after an hour of trying realised it was very difficult to follow and certainly not fun! You can't make long sentences with the cards so I can't see how this can aid Spanish learning. We now use a programme called 'babel' which is fun and extremely good! I think £30 is ridiculous and I wouldn't even pay £5 for it.