Here’s an idea for an easy-to-make DIY board game. We’re using it as a spelling game, but you’ll also find ideas below on how you can adapt it for different literacy and maths activities.
DIY spelling board game
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You can make your board game as big as you like, but I used two pieces of A4 card, taped together on the reverse. This gives a generous enough playing space, and makes it easy to store too. I drew out a garden path ‘race track’ of 20 squares, with a picnic rug in the middle, and coloured it to look like a picnic in a garden. Of course you can make yours any theme you wish, and it’s great to pick something your child will love.
Then I made 40 playing cards, the right size to fit on the picnic rug in the centre of our playing board. We’re working and words ending in ~k, ~ck, and ~ke at the moment, but you’ll find ideas below for how to adapt the game to suit your own child’s stage.
I wrote some of our words around the garden path. If you write these in pencil, you’ll be able to rub them out and write in a new set of words, which means you can use the same board to play lots of different variations of your spelling and maths work. I’m thinking you could also paint it with chalkboard paint, making it really easy to write on and wipe off – that’d make a cool road for car-themed version of the game.
Two to four people can play this game at a time. The idea is to move around the garden path race track reading, analysing and matching spelling words. It’s a fun way to practise and repeat words you are working on.
How to play the DIY board game
1. Each player is dealt a hand of six cards. The rest of the cards are played face-down in the centre of the board game.
2. Each player has a playing piece which they place on one of the bees as the starting line. {We used Sylvanian figures, but your child might like to use a toy car or a dinosaur, or whatever they like}
3. Taking turns, each player rolls a die and moves along the number of spaces show on the die.
4. When they land on a square, they read the word and see if any of the words in their hand follow the same spelling rule. {So in our version, if you land on ‘kick‘ you need to have a card in your hand that ends in ~ck, not ~k or ~ke}. If you do have a matching card, you can ‘throw it away’ to a pile at the side of where you’re playing. If you don’t have a card that follows the spelling rule, you have to pick up a card from the pile in the centre, on the picnic rug. The other players can help to check that everyone is correctly matching the spelling rules when they pick a card to throw away.
5. If you land on a bee, you can discard any card of your choice from your hand. {We love bees!}
6. Keep playing and taking turns until all the cards on the picnic rug have been used. If you like to have a winner, it can be the person who has the most cards in their ‘throw away pile’.
Adapting the game for letters and numbers
You can use this same DIY board game and adapt it to the right stage for your own child.
If you would like to make the game simpler, you can focus on letters. Make a set of playing cards where all the worlds start with a, b, or c. Play the game in the same way, but match your words by their first letter – so if you land on ‘a‘, you might throw away ‘apple or ‘acorn’ from your hand.
You can make any variation of playing cards to match any set of spelling words you are working on. Perhaps make a set that works on words that start with ch, sh and th. Or words that rhyme with cat, sit and hop. Remember to use pencil to write on the words around your track, so you can use the DIY board game again and again.
You can make a version to work on math facts too. You could use odd and even numbers. Or focus on numbers that are bigger than the one you land on, or ones that are smaller. Or make a times table version, where if you land on a 5 you can only discard a card that is a multiple of 5.
ABCs and 123s : fun learning activities for letters and math
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