Craft with Kids: Homemade Board Game

I got this idea in my head when I was busy creating the Summer Of Fun kit. This is an easy, inexpensive way to have tons of fun and creativity with your kids.  And it occupied my 6 and 4 year old for an entire Summer afternoon.  Priceless.

1 white poster board (enough for two game boards)

scissors sharpie marker crayons stickers and other embellishments

  1. Fold poster board in half.

 2. Cut along fold to make 2 game boards.

3. Use your sharpie to freehand (or by tracing a bowl) create a small circle in one corner as the starting point.

 4. Use the same method to create a larger circle in opposite corner as the finish point.

  5. Using the sharpie draw a squiggle line from beginning point to finish (or allow your child if they're old enough). Making sure to not cross over your own line.   6. Follow the line you just made 1 inch away from original line to create a path. Add dashed lines for spaces.  

7. Ask child what they want their game to be called (themed).  Ella chose "Flower Power" and Evangeline chose "Princess Palace".  You may suggest some easy themes like "Fairy Forrest" or for boys "Pirate Point" or "Dinosaur Den".  Yeah, I'm way into alliteration.

  8. Write name of game on the game board.  

9. Have the kids start with markers (if they're old enough) and make bridges to jump someone forward in the game (ala Candyland)

10. Let the kids go wild with the crayons, stickers and markers.  You may notice I put a small dot on a few squares and told my kids not to color those squares. These are for special squares where we wanted to write an instruction.

11. Help kids to write items on their action squares like "lose a turn" or move ahead 3 spaces".  We chose to make ours follow the theme of the game. So in Ella's game where a flower princess is trying to return to her garden home one of the squares says "Bee Sting - lose a turn!" and she drew a bee next to it (again, ala Candyland). 

And may I add that Evangeline had covered her board game (named Princess Palace) with Princes, Princesses and frogs and when I asked about a penalty square she chose a Vampire Lair where the blood gets sucked from you and you have to go back to the start. Genius and hilarious.

My kids ATE THIS UP!  We played each game multiple times and it was so much fun. They loved landing on squares of their own creation and winning the game they created.

Have fun and HAPPY GAMING!