You will need to think about the age group that will play. Once you have a few successes under your belt the children will be excited about designing their own completely new game! Make Your Own Board Gameīrainstorm some different themes or concepts to try to come up with a new and different idea to make your own board game about. How would Monopoly look if it was played in Ancient Egypt? Could you design your own version of Carcassonne to fit the country or city you are studying? This is a great way of adapting games to fit your current homeschooling project.

So for example, you could make a card game such a top trumps easily by coming up with a new theme (say dinosaurs or fish!) and investigating statistics to go on your playing cards. Take the idea of adapting a current game to make your own board game one step further by changing the theme of it totally. Create your own fantasy map - or sneak in some geography by getting the children to design something around a particular country. Other games that adapt well to make your own board games are map based games such as Ticket to Ride and Risk. Just changing the playing board without changing the rules is an easy way to get the satisfaction (without the difficulty of trying to get rules that hang together nicely). Start simply by trying to adapt a game you currently enjoy. Monopoly has had a lot of success with exactly this concept! Even small children can adapt Monoply to include 'grandmas house' and the local supermarket.It will also spark lots of ideas for themes that you can use for your game.

The key to creating a good game is to firstly play lots of different board games! This will give you all a feel for the different way that games are put together - and how the rules work.

But it also develops logic skills very well - most games are based on rules and those rules need to hang together logically. This is a great way to develop creativity and a sense of being entrepreneurial.

How to create your own game board