Make your own board game! Play and learn math at the same time! Invite a friend to double the fun!
To create a board game, simply raid your craft/office supply
closet/recycling bin for cool supplies.
Here are a few ideas to get you going:
File folders and the insides of cereal boxes make great game
boards.Sticker dots make terrific space markers, or cut them out of
construction paper or draw them on directly. Erasers are our favorite game pieces, but we also use plastic toys, coins, cereal, lego men, jingle bells, leaves, rocks, and sticky frogs.Use die or create a deck of low numbered index cards to determine the number of spaces to be moved.
Here are a few tips:
For kids just getting into board games, make a short board
in which the spaces are pretty much a straight line.
For shorter boards, manipulate the die to only read 1 or
2. I use washi tape and a sharpie
to remark the sides with more pips.
Taking turns is an important skill to be sure, but to
maintain interest in a longer board game consider giving every kid his own
die.
Create a model of what a finished game might look like
Yesterday, we required a couple rounds of Monster Math to
get us in a gaming mood, but once the kids hit the craft table they were
commited. Well, Sam and Aurora
were committed. After making
boards that looked more like scatter plots, Adeline and Morgan left the table
for a rough and tumble game of hide and seek.
Watching Aurora and Sam was pretty remarkable. They each had a vision and worked so
diligently towards their goal. Sam
carefully drew each number in his lily pads and then redrew them until they
were perfect. Aurora drew her path
of play, methodically placed each color dot, and wrote in numbers into each
circle. This was my WOW moment
full of the warm, overwhelming pride reserved only for parents. Aurora wrote
all the way to twelve before asking for help. My heart was all a flutter thereafter.
We choose game pieces and played. One to one correspondence. Couting. Addition.
Cooperation (We play that a game is won when all players reach the end). Subitizing. Reasoning. Smiling. Lots of smiling.
