Make Your Own Board Game
For Free

Get your kids to make your own board game for free!  It's easy, teaches math and is great fun for all.

There is nothing to beat playing a game that you have made yourself!

The great thing about making a board game is that it involves practical math skills.

You'll be doing lots of measuring and fiddling with different dimensions

So you get the added bonus of sneaking in lots of homeschool math along the way.

Come and see how much fun we've made making Star Trek and Warriors Monopoly!

And you'll soon find out that simple is best.

Make Your Own Board Game For Kids

One great tip to get you started:

Easy is best.

Inventing a new board game is something that the professionals spend years agonizing over.

I think the best start is to take a game you are familiar with and make your own free homeschool version by personalizing the topic, the players and the cards.

Make Your Own Monopoly

Monopoly is one of the easiest games to start with. You can choose the theme that interests your kids the most and have great fun deciding what to do with it.

You can make your own board game for free, like we did.

Tip: To make this project work best, it may be better if you, the adult, help with repetitive tasks like cutting out cards.

DIY Board Game

Warriors Monopoly

My daughter Catherine chose Warriors Monopoly. If you land on Park Lane you'll pay to stay in the Star Clan Leader den and the mortgage value will be paid in mice.

You'll win second prize in a hunting contest and get sent to the Twoleg place for a jail term.

As banker, Catherine has plenty of practice in math!

Instructions For Warriors Monopoly

Christine's request was too heartfelt to ignore, so I have made a free download printable which will show you how to make Warriors board game.

The Board Layout follows the Monopoly colors for each space.  Catherine invented all the labels herself.

Starting at the START space it reads: Collect 200 mice as you pass HUNT with a blue arrow (this is the starting space).

Then the colors of the spaces follow roughly the Monopoly layout. 

The card sets are called Clan Chest and Chance.  Clan Chest are based on Community Chest but worded differently so they fit with Warriors and the same with the Chance deck.

For example:

• Monopoly Community Chest would say "It's your Birthday collect xxxx from each player"
  
• Warriors Clan Chest would say: "You won a hunting competition collect 10 mice from each player"

Property cards

are the Clan dens with the clan colors saying how much they cost to buy, how many mice a player has to spend if they land on the space and the mortgage value (in mice!) on the back.

You can get the instructions for how to make Warriors board game here.

As you can see, when you make your own board game it's really inventive and fun.

I am sure your child could pick their favorite book series and turn it into a game.

Star Trek Monopoly

As you can see, Monopoly converts easily to any theme you like. My son William chose Star Trek with space chest cards and a Klingon Star Empire.

In fact, this was his homeschool Christmas present to us - which just shows that fun Christmas math activities really pay off!

It's fairly easy to cut the board out of white card. You can make players from modeling clay and print out copies of the property cards on the computer.

Make Your Own Board Game: Operation

This is a fabulous idea from Lorna in my Courageous Homeschooling Facebook support group.

To remind yourself, Cavity Sam is feeling unwell, so you need to play Doctor by removing his ailments without making the buzzer sound.

The good news is this makes a brilliant homemade board game for kids!

Here's Lorna to show you the mechanics of the game, which are really simple:

"Here are the inside mechanics - crocodile clips, tin foil and a buzzer. The holes in the body are cased in foil which acts as the connector when the players touch the sides as they try to remove an item from the body." ~ Lorna

Lorna's family adapted the classic game to history.

"Meet my son's 18th century fusilier who has been hit with a cannon ball, trodden on by a cavalry horse, has a sword shard in his arm and been shot by a musket bullet." ~ Lorna

"The kids researched their character and then decided on appropriate injuries, but the normal game is just removing body parts so it could be a straightforward biology lesson game too."

"It was a really fun project done with very little assistance from me and that included art, history research, circuit making for the electronics and some fab design skills for their accompanying card element."

~ Lorna, Courageous Homeschooling Facebook support group

Star Wars

If your kids love Star Wars I think you would all have great fun making your own Monopoly version!

Risk

Parents will remember the old classic game of Risk!

I'm not suggesting this for a Monopoly game, but it's just the sort of game you could work with your kids to make your own version.

It might even help with a bit of homeschool geography as well!

You'll also see when it comes to fun kids math that we've found that a big help with homeschool math is to use cuddly toys as the players.

No one seems to mind too much when Jess the collie loses again!

Make Your Own Board Game Ideas

My friend Julie has some excellent ideas about how to make your own board game and can even suggest a site where you can get your own board game professionally published.

You can also have a think about any card games you can adapt to make homeschool math fun. We took one of Julie's homeschooling ideas to make our own Top Trumps for Birds and Fish as part of our 2nd grade activities.

What you'll find is that if you make your own board game the extra effort makes it even more fun to play.

Want to remember this? Pin this How To Make A Board Game For Kids page to your favorite Pinterest board!

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