My disclaimer: I am merely a student of Latin, not a scholar of it. A few years ago I was learning Latin along with my children. I did not set out to create Latin games on top of all my other subjects-- I thought I would just learn Latin along with them. We had several curricula, but they had a limited number of practice activities. That might be fine for older students who pick things up very quickly and don't need practice, but for us, the lack of activities is problematic. I thought that maybe some of you might be having the same problem if you are doing Latin? If so, maybe these games might help you as well.
- "Chariots at the Circus" (click here to download)
"Chariots at the Circus" teaches 85 Latin words. It features a board that resemble the Circus Maximus where chariot races were held. The tokens are little chariots, of course. The two main "selling points" of this game are: 1) you learn as you go along (many Latin games I have seen require you to know words already), and 2) all players play at the same time so that there is no "dead time" while players wait for their turn. Here is a sample list of words in this game: aqua, ambi, novus, omni, bellum, annus, nimbus, mare, crux, pulvis, scio, regina, rex, terra, semi, stella, multi, tardus, scriptum, ursa.
"The Verb Conjugation Game" (click here to download)
This game practices two conjugation forms: verbs like amare (to love) and videre (to see) and makes special emphasis on the endings. Players try to get cards that match English/Latin, such as "I love/amo" and place them on their conjugation mat next to the appropriate endings. The verbs practiced in this game are: amare, clamare,narrare, donare, intrare, videre, tenere, habere, ridere, iubere.
"Simple Silly Sentence Game" (click here to download)
"The Simple Silly Sentence Game" makes two-words sentences and features some silly animal pictures, so you can make sentences like "The dog reads" or "The fish orders." It has 16 animal cards and two spinners: one for the subjects and one for the verbs.
- "Quid Facis?" (click here to download)
"Quid Facis?" practices just the first person singular forms of verbs, such as amo, video, narro, teneo, etc. The game needs a question reader to read aloud various scenarios and the players use the cards in their hand to respond as to what they would do.
- "Volo/Nolo" (click here to download )
"Volo/Nolo" is a game about forming simple sentences. Each sentence must begin with either "Volo" (I want to) or "Nolo" (I don't want to) followed by a verb phrase and a prepositional phrase. Thus, you can create sentences such as "I don't want to sing in the garden," or "I want to annoy a bear next to the school." The phrases are printed on the cards, so there is no struggling over grammar. You simply choose three phrases to construct a sentence. This game is designed to review 75 common words and phrases (you just can't get enough review!) and to allow the students to actually SAY something in Latin, instead of just learning words and endings.
Here's a very simple worksheet on parts of the body
- Here's a very simple worksheet on adjective agreement
Another resource you should know about:
For another source of creative Latin materials you can use with kids, check out classicalacademicpress.com.
And here is a link that was sent to me by another Latin-teaching mom. It has a list of resources aimed at the younger-than-high-school crowd. (Notice Latin app on side bar.)