Alphabug soup - There's a fly in my soup!

s...s... soup!

I was looking for an open ended vocabulary game to test some of my YLE students when I stumbled upon “Alphabug Soup”, which was tucked away in our vast boardgames cupboard, right next to the gateway to Narnia.

The essence of the game is to get your critters around the board, and back into your soup pot, by naming words that begin with the letter displayed on the letter disks that you pick up after rolling the die. The aim of the game is to collect as many disks as possible, NOT get around the board as quickly as possible. Repeated words are strictly forbidden!

Rather than focusing on a specific vocabulary set, this game provides the students with freedom to choose their own words. I was especially pleased when “Union Jack” was uttered during game play! The game also helps clear up some common mistakes with words beginning with "l" or "r" and "b" or "v". One of my classes was struggling with differentiating between b and d, the competitive aspect of the game soon straightened out those errors.

I’ve also experiment with some variations to the game and upping the difficulty. Instead of only picking up 1 letter disk per turn, players pick up the amount of letter disks as shown on the die face, moving forward 1 space for each correct answer. For hard mode, the number you roll is the number of words you must say beginning with the letter shown on your chosen disk.

“Alphabug Soup” is fun, versatile and basic enough to suit classes of ranging abilities, whilst allowing for a broader range of vocabulary to come into use. The students also don’t seem to mind the collections of critters bobbing away in their soup pots!