Easy Homemade Games You Make for Kids

If your child loves games, but you simply don’t have the money to buy even more games, just take an afternoon to make several game sets yourself. Your child will love them and you’ll have loads of fun making them. It doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive to create handmade games. All you need are a few craft supplies and a few things from around your home.

One fun game to make is a treasure chest seek and search. Use a cardboard box to make the treasure chest itself. Paint it and decorate it with flat wooden pieces of wood or even old hardware pieces. Or, check at party stores for cardboard treasure chests you put together yourself. An old trunk from a yard sale will work fine, too.

Fill the treasure chest with fake jewelry, a belt, a pair of shoes, and other things from around the house. The object of the game is to have one person hide all the items then let the kids go search for them. The person who finds the most items is the winner. You can limit the areas that can be searched by announcing certain rooms or by placing red “x” stickers on taboo-places. The treasure chest game doesn’t absolutely have to be for children. It’s a fun game for adults to play, too.

Make a game board from a piece of cardboard or posterboard. You decide how simplistic or how intricate the design of the board is. Use markers, stickers, felt, decorative paper – even cloth – to create the game board you want. Cut a picture of Noah’s ark from a magazine and mount it to cardboard. A cardboard stand, glued to the bottom of the image, will help it stand up.

Purchase a pack of farm animals for kids. The animals you buy should have two alike of each set. You may have to purchase two packs to have twins of each animal. The object of the game is to gather animals to board Noah’s ark. You make the rules. Either the animals can be placed around the board, and each person must collect them in pairs, or you can start out by giving each child two sets of two animals. He or she must then get the animals to the opposite side of the board, over to the ark. You can glue fake trees to the board, line certain roads with small rocks, or further enhance the board. Use dice or make a spinner. The final creation is strictly your own. The player that gets two alike animals to the ark first is the winner.

Kids that are too young to play Scrabble can still have lots of fun with the famous tiles. Place the tiles face down on a table. You don’t have to use all the tiles, but can choose how many to use, in accordance with the ages of the children. Up to four children can play at once. Have each child draw a letter and place it in front of himself, letter side up. Go around the table and let them each choose a second letter. Kids can, at any time, begin spelling out simple words with the letters they’ve drawn. They can continue taking turns drawing letters and making words. They will set the words in front of them to be seen by all. When the letters are gone you’ll figure up the score by the amounts shown on the Scrabble tiles themselves. If you don’t have any Scrabble tiles you can make your own from cardboard squares and stickers.

Cut a large, round circle of cardboard or even use the cardboard circle from a frozen pizza. Cover it a light-colored felt. Glue or tape the fabric in place. Use a black marker to make a small circle in the center, a larger circle around that, and an even larger one around that one. Assign point amounts by writing them in the circles. The center circle could be 50 or 100 points. Other circles can be worth less. You determine the amounts. Purchase a pack of ping pong balls and glue strips of velcro around them. Hang the game board on a door or wall and kids can throw the balls to earn points. Any amount of people can play if you have enough balls. Let each child throw two or three balls then add up the score. Let the next child step up and do the same thing. It’s a fun game that’s cheap and easy to make.

There are many great games you can create for your kids by investing very little. Use your imagination to come up with additional games that implement your child’s favorite cartoon characters or just army men you’ve purchased. They’ll have just as much fun as if you purchased the game but you’ll love how much money you save by making it yourself.

Reference:

• Purchase assorted game pieces here: www.orientaltrading.com