Shufflespeak is a series of 4 language games designed specifically for pre-readers, though some clever expansions make it interesting for any age, for any period of time.
The game includes a large number of “packs”. Each pack contains one word, with one syllable per card. As the name of the game suggests, you give everyone a random pack, they shuffle it, and then place the cards before them.
Most likely, the players now have a word in front of them … that doesn’t make sense. It’s all jumbled-up! It says “TER-WA-ON-MEL” instead of “WATERMELON”.
That’s the challenge!
On your turn, the Guardian (parent/teacher/someone present who CAN read) simply reads what’s in front of you, no matter how silly. Then you’re allowed to swap two of your cards in an effort to make it make sense. As soon as you’ve recovered the correct message, you win.
With this trick the players don’t need to be able to read themselves. They don’t even need to know all the words yet—you learn new words by playing. As long as one Guardian is present who reads out what’s in front of you, the game will work.
Once you’ve played this a few times, you’ll have grown in language skill and find the base game very easy. No worries! Try any of the expansions, such as the one that adds a random “noise” card that’s wrong and makes it harder to figure it out, or one that adds special actions you can take to help out. If still too easy … you can simply move to packs with longer words ;) Figuring out a 5-syllable shuffled word, with possible noise interfering, would even challenge adults.
We are very proud of these games and hope they provide an example of how to make absolutely every part of learning an effective game!
The other versions in the series are about shuffled Words/Sentences, Phonics and Letters.
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Product Contents
Below is a summary of this product's contents. The actual product might have even more inside, but never less.
- Rulebook for the game (Intro/Overview page, 1 page rules base game, 1 page upgrades, 1 page expansions, 1 page mega-expansion to play forever)
- Base Game Material PDF (one in color, one in grayscale)
- Expansion Material PDF (one in color, one in grayscale)
- The Material Generator (open in any browser) to generate your own PDFs with your preferred settings and new cards