Playing Games

My son has been interested in board games lately, so I decided to do a unit on them. We began our unit as I usually do, with a trip to the library.

We read lots of books on the history of board games, dating back to before Ancient Egyptian times. This was one of the first units we did where I could clearly see history becoming a part of our unit. We did talk briefly about ancient astronomy, but I felt the history in this one more personally as we discussed the first games people played. Where they might have found "playing pieces" and how did the "rules" get passed along?

Finishing off this unit, we made two different games. The first game we constructed was an ancient marble game.







After that, I had each kid think of their own board game and create it. We talked about how many players could play, what the board might look like, will it use dice, what is the object of the game...? I had meant to have the kids write up the instructions, but we never did get around to that. We celebrated their games by playing several rounds of each!

Here, my daughter made a game where you need to build a smoothie by the time your player gets to the middle. She included cards to draw, pieces to represent the smoothie ingredients and a foldable game board.









Here, my son make an ice cream cone shaped game board. Players roll the die and follow a snake-like pattern up the board. Some squares help you move forward, others make you move backwards.