Create your own board game

It's interesting that when you have so much to deal with, important things and when you really need to focus, other completely different and irrelevant activities come to your mind. Is it called procrastination?

I suppose.

However, I can blame Hive 😁 and the little inspiration I got from one post I saw the other day. It was a mom who posted about the activities her son was doing during the summer break. Games, puzzles, chess, crosswords... how cool is that when you are a child and can play like that...

Eureka! We can do it too!! Why not? Let's awaken the inner child within us and make something out of nothing. Maybe we need paper to write or draw, some pencils, colours, scissors, a piece of cardboard and transparent duct tape. That was the plan at the beginning, just use these things and avoid making a lot of mess...

Hmmm... that part of avoiding making a lot of mess was messed up! 😂

I had a good time anyway although after I finished this little project I had to clean up the chaos. So, this afternoon, instead of doing all the other super-important stuff I let myself create a board game for my little students. Something like this:

These were the previous board games that I drew for the little ones, the biggest one already several years ago. The goal is to have fun while learning music; you know, I also like to have fun while teaching so I often participate as a player in these handmade board games. 😆

So, the new one started as a piece of paper that I cut to the size of the yellow cardboard. The cardboard will be the base when I finish drawing the game on the paper.

I didn't use any ruler to make these lines, it's all a freestyle thing 😁, although I used a small duck tape as a measure for the circles. They will mark the starting point and the end of the game.

The lines were transformed into paths and little boxes with musical signs. Every box represents one measure of four beats which the players have to read correctly. We will have dice and game pawns to move on this board. In the starting box, I placed a little creature showing the time signature: 4/4.

This is the moment I finished writing down the rhythm for each box (measure). The end is another little character holding a heart as it is glad we read the rhythmical patterns and arrived at the end successfully. 😇

The board would not stay uncoloured, of course. I brought more colours, so the fun could start. You remember my first photo where I thought those colours would be enough? Well, this is the moment when everything went into chaos at the table!

I started colouring the boxes but then I realized I should erase the written musical signs... The graphite from the pencil left a dirty mark in the bright colours. So, I erased each field, painted it, and then rewrote the rhythm that was written earlier. Fun, right? 😂

Getting there slowly... It started looking better.

And once it was finished, with every box coloured, and the characters also got their dresses, it looked like this:

But wait, you need to see the mess around it! So, the complete picture would be something like the following scene. A real crime scene! Yeah, I had to clean it later.

As the final step, I used a wide duct tape to stick together the paper with the yellow cardboard + to cover the whole game with it. I did it in parts, line by line until it got completely covered and protected. I took this photo just to show its shiny surface.

Any child around who would like to learn music during the summer break?

Here you go, this is a little idea you can vary as you want and make something for your children, or with them - together.

Your turn!