Playable games

One of the project options for the kids was: 'Make a playable game'. They all really liked that idea, and several times they have come to me with made up boards and started to tell me the rules. Every time I sent them back to write down the rules or figure out game pieces. Today we finally have two complete playable games. Dude is trying to make his so complicated I am not sure it will ever be done!


Princess spent far more time on the artwork than the rules.  At first she said you rolled to see how many inches you moved.  Then when I asked if we really had to carry a ruler around to play she decided to mark the spaces at about one inch.  She settled on having each player roll a 6 sided die.  Even you move two spaces, odd you move one.

You can't see very well in that picture, but she did put a lot of detail into the tiny people (a grandma, mother, and baby) All in all, a playable if a bit boring game.  We talked about how it was pretty much pure luck.  Whoever rolled more even numbers was going to win.  

Little Man was very anxious to share his game.  He started with a small board drawn in a somewhat U shape on one piece of paper.  He cut out some rocket ships, and said we rolled the die to see how far we moved.  I tried to get a picture of it, but BabyGirl started practicing her cutting skills on it before I could.

I asked if we should move a certain amount, he said 'just move what you roll.  So he counted to 6 on his roll while moving around 6 centimeters (remember no space markers, just one long track).  I rolled a three and moved way faster placing my rocket far ahead of his.  Then Dude rolled a 5 and moved his piece all the way to the end.  Little Man had this very confused look on his face.  He was sure we weren't supposed to win in one turn, but he couldn't quite say we didn't follow the rules.  He finally decided to put space markers on the board, and traced lines on the track about one centimeter apart.  There was no way to fit any kind of rocket in one of them!

Daddy decided to help out taping two pieces of paper together and helping with some basic shapes.  Then he suggested some different types of spaces.  Here is the end result with both Little Mans work, and Daddy's.

Green arrows move you forward a space, red 'shooting stars' send you back one space.  And the orange 'suns' make you lose a turn.  Down on the bottom left he had a spot with a green arrow pointing to a red shooting star.  I landed there and went into a loop going back and forth till he realized the problem.  Daddy stepped in with an idea making it have two arrows and moving you two spaces.  (to that sun making me lose a turn)

At the center of the board is the objective Jupiter.  He insisted he had to draw plenty of moons to go along with the planet though he fell short of the 63 known moons.

And finally here is a photo of Dude working on his game, along side the various kitchen items used for tracing.  He started with a mini board that had the same problem of  not enough room on each space for his cut out figures.