Stuck at home with nowhere to go? How about playing some fun board games with the kids?! Before you reach for your phone to order some board games or card games, why not try making your own?
You will need cardboard packaging; cereal boxes or cake boxes will do great! Other basic necessities are coloured markers, pencils, rulers and tape.
The process
- Tell the kids that they have a very important mission: to create a game with basic materials provided. If you can form two teams that would be even better! Kids are naturally competitive, and they will want to outdo one another. Do manage this carefully, or else it might backfire on you!
- Get them into their respective teams and start brain-storming ideas for their games. You can give them a time frame, so they do not go overboard with it.
- Once they have decided on the game they want to make, it’s a get-go! Make sure there are enough materials for everyone to work with on the project, and be on a standby if they need any help.
- When they are done with the making of the games, you could test them out to see if everything is working as planned. You can tweak the rules as you play along to make it better.
Some ideas to get you started
- Snakes and Ladders – You can change the shape of the board and have fun filling in the boxes with drawings of creatures and monsters. Or you could create something like our Lizards and Ladders game!
- Monopoly – a very popular game with kids. They could make their own, using their own country of origin or any foreign country they would like to learn more about.
- Charades – It’s fun to draw on the cards and actions to be acted out by the players.
- Card games like Dobble can be easily replicated by drawing various objects or symbols on cardboard just like the original game.
Cool games from my creative students
- A flags game – The players have to identify the flag drawn and coloured on the cards. Points will be awarded to the one who identifies them correctly. You can also include fun quizzes about each country for added general knowledge!
- A drawing game – The player throws a dice, lands on a square and has to draw a picture according to what is instructed on the square.
- An Amazing Race game – It’s a long race that involves hotel stays and building houses. You can create cards with special instructions like ‘go back 10 steps’ or ‘go forward 10 steps’.
- A battle game – Cards are designed for battle, just like some card games like Pokemon or Vanguard series, with each card having special powers in the form of numerical numbers.
This father had a lightbulb moment while playing a game with his children. He then decided to create and market his own game…
So who knows, maybe you or your kids could be the next games creators in the market?
