Hands-On Project – Learn, Review, and Assess with Homemade Board Games

In our homeschool, I try to incorporate hands-on projects at several different points in the learning process.  We do hands-on projects:

• to learn new material
• review new and old materials
• as a form of assessment.

One of my favorite hands-on projects are child-created board games.  Not only is the whole process of making the game educational, the game itself serves as a valuable and fun tool for review.  I just love these types of assignments – they integrate several different school subjects and encourage creativity.

A fabulous resource for blank game boards and everything else your children might want for making their own books and games can be found at Bare Books.  In addition to blank game boards, Bare Books also sells pawns, dice, blank game cards, blank money, and blank spinners.  In addition, Bare Books has a really helpful section that provides guidelines for a wide variety of assignments using their products.  For example, Bare Books provides guidelines for an Ancient Civilizations game assignment.

Here are the guidelines that I provided for my children for the board game assignment that accompanied a unit study we completed on germs last year:

• Make your own game with a germ theme using the game board provided for you.
• Think of a title for your board game, create rules, and add special steps on the board such as “You come down with the e coli bacteria and need to stay in bed for two days. Miss a turn.”
• Write questions about your topic on index cards to be used during the game. Write the answers on the backs of the index cards. You must include at least 30 question cards.
• You will also need game markers. The game board should be decorated with artwork appropriate to your topic.

I would make one change to the instructions, though. Thirty question cards is really not enough – 50 or more would be better for actually playing the game. We have played the game a few times now and more question cards would be great.

My two older children (4th and 6th grade at the time) worked together to create the Germs Game pictured below.

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My daughter independently created a Middle Ages board game as part of our Middle Ages Unit last year.  You can read all about that board game and see pictures here.

Another idea for board games that is really fun is to make a GIANT board game on a fabric sheet.  My children did this project just for fun two summers ago.  While this was a fun, independent project for my children to fill a summer afternoon, the same idea could be easily adapted for an educational project.

However you decide to incorporate homemade board games into your homeschool, your children are sure to enjoy making them!

Samantha writes about homeschooling and family life at To Be Busy at Home.