by Kecia

Created on: July 01, 2007

While family game nights are lots of fun, creating your very own board games can be even more fun! Be sure to have the whole family involved, and make something that is suitable for everyone to enjoy. My family has made a few in the past, and I'd like to share with you the basics of making a great family game.

1. Start with your game board. Decide how you want it to look. You could have a long board, with a "Start" and "Finish", or a circular board that you continue to go around and around during play. Create the board on a large piece of strong cardboard or poster board. Make it more challenging by adding special spaces, such as "lose a turn" or "roll/spin again". Decorate it with markers, crayons, glitter, stickers, and whatever else you have in your arts and crafts stash!

2. Next, think of how the game will be played. Will you move across the board by rolling dice, by a spinner, or by drawing a card? Dice and spinners may be easier if younger children are involved because it will reduce the amount of reading. If you want your game to include trivia, it may be better to make cards that have questions written on them. Let everyone write questions, and color code the cards according to each family member (i.e. Dad creates questions for the blue cards, Mom for the red cards, and so on) so when it's time to play, no one will be answering their own questions.

3. Next, decide how the winner will be chosen. Will it be the first player to reach a certain space on the board? Or will it be the person with the most points? Or maybe the player with the most money? For younger children, it may be easier to have a simple "start" to "finish" game, but I believe calculating points or money would be more challenging and possibly more fun.

4. Create the other objects for your game. Be sure to have 4 to 6 (depending on how many players there are) game tokens for players to move along the board. This would be a fun job for the younger children to draw and cut out different shapes or pictures. Be sure to use thick paper or laminate the pieces so they will hold up for future use. If money will be used, cut up several sheets of different colored paper (use a different color for each amount). The money can be as simple as writing "$1" or you could go all out and create "family money", which would look similar to real US money, but glue photos of family member's faces in the center where the presidents should go.

5. Also, make sure you have a way to pack all your game accessories up when you are finished playing. Sandwich bags are good for small items, like dice and game cards. A shoe box or shirt gift box should be big enough for the rest of the items.

My family loves board games, so we have weekly game nights. Now, we just play games we buy, but we used to make new ones about ever 5 or 6 weeks. It kept everyone entertained, and it was so nice to see the whole family cooperating to create something that we can use over and over again!

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