Friday, May 31, 2013

SLAP IT! [Irregular Past Tense Verbs Game]


My son said, "I buyed it" the other day. You'd think he'd uttered a four letter word. This writer with an B.A. in English nearly had to cover her ears. Okay, I am being a tad overdramatic. But it was certainly annoying enough to inspire this game.


I used the same template to make the cards as our Irregular Plural Nouns Go Fish game. There are TWO decks of cards for this game, though.

Black and white cards = present tense verbs
Colorful cards = past tense verbs
I printed the cards on cardstock, shot the pages with spray glue, and attached different papers to the backs of each deck (I used black and white music note scrapbook paper for the present tense verbs and solid green paper for the past tense verbs). Then I used my paper trimmer to cut out the cards.

Download a 6-page PDF of the playing cards here.

Time to play!

Keep the decks of cards separated and shuffle each well. The game is played like slap jack.

Set a timer for 6-10 minutes (or longer).

Turn the top card on the present tense deck (black and white cards) over so each player can read it. Leave it face up.

Now begin turning the colored (present tense) cards over one at a time, forming a pile. The player to spot the past tense version (e.g. left) of the present tense verb (e.g. leave) and slap the card first gets to take all the cards underneath.


The player counts those cards and the number is written down on a makeshift scorecard. The colored cards won by the player are combined with any remaining colored cards and a new present tense card is flipped over; play continues.

When the timer goes off, tally each player's score. Whoever has the highest number wins!

My son creamed me at this game. I'd like to blame the fact that I was snapping pictures, rather than my poor reflexes.

This was so much fun that my son asked to play SLAP IT! again later that same day!

29 comments:

  1. This is wonderful! I am tutoring a young Russian boy in English and was struggling to find a fun activity about irregular past tense. THANK YOU for sharing this!

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    1. Can you explain to me how play it??

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    2. Instructions for how to play are described in the blog post above.

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  2. Brilliant ideas, thank you so much for your sharing.

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  3. Fun game to play with my Speech students! Thanks for the Freebie!

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  4. Lots of thanks! You make teachers and students happy! I bet my kids and adults are gonna loooove your memory games and all your stuff.

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  5. Thank you for sharing this will be fun!

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  6. Brilliant !!!! Having fun playing this game with my friends

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  7. Thanks very much! I'll play it today with my student.

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  8. Do you have this in word format so I could tailor it to my foreign language student needs?

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    1. Sorry, Erica! All my games are created in Microsoft Publisher. If you have that software, email me and I'll send you the file to modify.

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    2. I wish I could have it too if it is possible! :DDD it's an awesome game to teach english! ;D

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    3. Antionieta, Send me an email message and I'll reply with the Microsoft Publisher file attached. My email address is on the About page.

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    4. hey! It would be awesome if I get it too!

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    5. I just sent over the file via email, Luis. If you don't see it, be sure and email again.

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  9. I love that this is a free resource! You are wonderful!

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  10. Thank you! I am a missionary in Asia teaching at a juvenile prison and the girls there loved this game :) Thanks!

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  11. Wonderful activity for my speech-language students! Thank you so much!

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  12. As a teacher of English Language Learners, irregular past tense verbs is always a big deal for me. This is an invaluable resource! Thank you!!!

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  13. Amazing, thank you so much! Played this game with a student today and he loved it!

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  14. Great idea! I will certainly use it when I start teaching

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  15. I really like the game, so I decided to expand the material for play with the irregular ones and not only with past tenses, but also with the past participle forms! Hope you like the post!
    https://mimundoele2.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/irregular-verbs/

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  16. Thank you for this inspiring game!Appreciate it!

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  17. Thank you so much for the game !!!

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  18. Thank you so much for sharing this.i hope my students like it.

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  19. I love the idea and I decided to use it in my classroom. It was a success!!! Thanks

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  20. This activity is incredible! Thank you so much for sharing it. My students are loving it and learning so cooperatively.

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  21. Hello!
    Thank you for sharing this material!

    I was wondering if you could also share the template without any verbs, so it would be possible for us to customize the cards

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