Build your own board game: Snakes and Ladders and Challenges
Kids bored? Here's an easy step-by-step DIY Snakes and Ladders board game (with an extra twist to keep them on their toes).Now's the time to get creative! Design and make your own board game with these easy-to-follow steps. Let the kids use their imagination to make this as epic as they can!
The Basic Version
Not a craft hoarder? No problem! All you need for this one is paper, a pen, some bits and bobs for playing tokens and a phone/laptop to use for dice!
Materials:
- Paper
- Pen
- Ruler or piece of card/book to draw straight(ish) lines
- Dice app / Dice website / Actual dice
- Items to be used as playing tokens. Use toys, blocks, bits from other games, etc.
Building Instructions:
Draw the base:
1. Draw a grid on your paper. The squares should be fairly large (we did 3x3cm). Make sure you rule out an even amount of rows, but add as many columns as you like.
It should look a little like this:
 2. Starting in the bottom left square and working your way up in a snake-like fashion, number your squares like this:
Add some ladders:
Add a couple of ladders to the board by drawing them on (or, if you can, cutting out strips of paper and pasting them on). The more ladders you have, the easier the game will be:
Add some (lots of) snakes:
Now add the snakes. Make them curly, long, short, zig-zaggy... the options are endless! Give them funny faces, googly eyes, scales, pretty design etc.
Make some challenges (here's the extra twist):
1. Cut or tear onther piece of paper into 10-15 separate pieces, big enough to write a sentence on.
2. On each piece of paper, write down a challenge. This could be anything from "Do 20 star jumps", to "Sing the Alphabet Song out the window to the neighbours", to "Find the silliest hat in the house and wear it for your next turn". The only limits here are your imagination and creativity! Make sure the kids get in on brainstorming for these challenges too.
3. Now select as many squares on the board as there are challenges and draw a star in the middle of these squares:
4. Put all the challenge papers in a bowl/jar/hat and mix them up.
How to play
- Place all the tokens on square number one. Take turns rolling the dice and moving your tokens forward the same number of spaces as shown on the dice. The winner is the first person to reach the final square at the top of the board.
- Ladders: If your token stops at the bottom of a ladder, congratulations! You get to climb the ladder up to the top and keep going from there.
- Snakes: Uh oh, if your token stops at the top of a snake you have to slither all the way down and start back at the bottom of the snake.
- Challenge stars: if your token stops on a challenge star, you must pick a challenge out of the bowl to do. If you do not complete the challenge, you must return the challenge to the bowl and end your turn. In your next turn, you must pick out another challenge to complete. You may only roll the dice and move forward when your challenge has been completed.
Have fun!!
The Extra Version
Drowning in colouring pencils? Too many blocks in the toy box to count? Why not get creative with the toys/items you have around the house. Here are some ideas on how to beef up the basic version.
1. Use blocks/Duplo™ to create your board
Instead of drawing the grid on paper, you could lay out wooden cube blocks or Duplo™ 4x4 blocks in a grid.2. Get crafty with your snakes and ladders
If you've got paints, colouring pencils, felts, glitter, etc lying around, why not draw and cut out your snakes and ladders to paste/tape to your board? If your kids are young, help them out by drawing some snake and ladder outlines for them to colour.
3. Do you have chalk? Create a life-size board on your driveway
If you've got chalk, why not go big and draw up a board on your driveway or car port? The kids can move through the board themselves (though you may have to roll the dice for them).
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