Home made board game

What to do with somewhat sick kids on a chilly windy day? How about making your own board game?

We started with an A3 piece of heavy paper. I drew a track and Miss 3 coloured it in to match the activities for each square:

Pink - Go forward x spaces
Light blue - Take a "Spot What" card

Travel Cars Mat

These travel cars mats are something I made for a long haul flight a few years back. They were great on the plane; the little cars tucked securely inside when they were folded up, and they fitted easily on a little table or into a handbag. They were also great for other waiting times; at the doctors, at friends' houses etc. 

To make them I used some old curtains that had the white lining on the back. I hemmed them with bias binding, although the material doesn't fray, so hemming was just for looks. The bridges I made using fabric scraps sewed over some thin plastic (cut from whatever packaging rubbish we had in house). They're not super sturdy, but they do the job of getting the imaginations rumbling. 

I have a snap machine to put snaps on (which I bought way back when I was first pregnant and thought I'd be using in all my endless "free time" as a new mum making cloth nappies. Ha ha!). So I used snaps for the bridges, where I'm sure velcro would probably do the job. I put a couple of different configurations in, so that the bridges can be moved around.

The road I drew on with a permanent marker, and coloured in using water colour paints. I have seen some mums making beautifully sewn on roads. I like the quick and dirty option when available.

I finished with a loop of elastic sewn on at one edge, ready to keep it all together while it's travelling.

Target Practice

Such a simple little game, this peg catapult delighted the kids. I taped a bottle lid to a clothes peg, and then I taped the peg to a plate. We rolled up balls of paper, and made some target plates. All that took less than 5 minutes, and then I could make dinner while the kids played. 

The inspiration came from here.

Travel Activity Book

I really wanted to make some wipe-erase activity sheets. I first bought wipe erase pens, but although they wrote well on clear folder pockets and smooth clear plastic, I found they wiped off very easily. This made the drawings (and little hands) very messy. Not to mention that the ink didn't wash out of clothes. Meanwhile they wouldn't wipe off laminated pages at all.

It wasn't until I heard about dry-erase crayons from Crayola and found a $5 packet of them at Target, that this idea really started to take shape.

The dry-erase crayons don't work easily on clear folder pockets (too much drag), but they do work well on laminated paper. Even better, they rub off quite easily with the cloth that comes with them, but don't rub off on your hand.

So then, time to make an activity travel book. I wanted something that would be suitable for planes, restaurants, the back of the car, rainy days, etc. so I made the pages A5 size.

I first started with some scenes that could be filled in with crayons or stickers. Miss 3 loves finishing a scene, wiping it off and then drawing it again. Especially if she has some company to do it with. Her favourite is the scene with the people, but I also included a space scene, underwater scene and a road. I used ripped paper, stickers and crayons to make them.

I then printed out some spot the difference puzzles (Mr 4's favourite puzzle at the moment), and I drew in some activities like a maze, thumbprints to make thumbprint doodles, and make-your-own sums in the left-over spaces. The crayons unfortunately don't show up fantastically on the red paper. The kids love mazes which are like streets with a different picture at each dead-end. And the maze lasts longer because they like visiting each object in turn. They are a little too easy for Mr 4, but that just means he tells me how they are too easy while he's busy doing them.

Next I put in the classic travel games: battle ships and close the square.

I also put in a blank page with a few other suggestions of games like tic-tac-toe or hangman that could be played there. I wrote the alphabet along one side to make hangman easier.

Finally I put in a home made plane scavenger hunt.

Edited to add: I have now made a plane trip scavenger hunt you can download for free from here.

I bound the book together using ring loops. This way I can change the pages to add things like my homemade i-spy pages (if I decide to add them in), new puzzles, new mazes or a page to collect stickers on. I can also take out the plane i-spy, and put in a car bingo etc.

A Homemade I-Spy Book

I have been eyeing off the beautiful home made i-spy books like this one from Delia creates. I wanted to add some of my own home-made i-spy pages to the restaurant/travel dry-erase books I've been making, but when I'd finished the pages I put them in a $1 photo album and really liked it. Perhaps I'll laminate them and put them in the travel book later.

It was such a simple project. Just get a collection of toys, spread them out on a plain background so that you can see everything, and make a photo. I carefully didn't make them too cluttered and busy, because the kids find that too difficult and loose interest (see my post on i-spy bags). I then chose 5 or 6 objects to photograph, this time making sure that there was enough space around each object that I would be able to crop them into a smaller image. I then put them together with a little rhyme of up to eight other things to find.

Mr 4 likes to read the rhymes, and Miss 3 has the pictures she can match. The kids loved helping me do it. Although of course, true to the nature of children, the help made the project much more challenging. After printing I noticed that one of the search-for pictures showed a pram that Miss 3 had taken out of the dolls house to be play with at a crucial moment. The project took several days to make 10 puzzles (there was something about spreading out a nice collection of toys on the floor that meant they needed to be played with for a couple of hours). The last one we did, Mr 4 gathered all the things, spread them out and helped with the rhyme. He loved seeing his own toys, especially his sticker-reward chart, which was filled with all sorts of different stickers.

Hopscotch

Sometimes it's the simple old fashioned things that are the most interesting. Miss 3 was dancing this week, doing jumping and hopping, and it made me think of hopscotch. I quickly drew up a couple of tracks, and the kids loved it. Mr 4 immediately wanted to draw his own, and both kids jumped and counted the afternoon away.