Giant Board Game
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We have been enjoying a fun new way to practice facts this week: a giant board game! One of the products that we’re currently reviewing, Rocket Phonics, included, as a bonus, a set of giant, printable ‘sound cards’ — one sound per page. There were some ideas for use, but many of them were for younger kids, so I came up with the idea of using them for a giant board game.
The first thing I did was make a giant die:
I simply started with a small, square box and spray painted it gold. Gold just happened to be a color I had. Any light color would do. Then, I used a bottle cap as my template for tracing the circles. Finally, I drew over my penciled in circle with a black Sharpie marker and colored them in.
Then, I printed the sound cards out on card stock and had the kids arrange them in the living room floor in a game board pattern. (Ignore the bits of paper in the floor. I vacuumed the next day.)
(In case you’re wondering, many of the ‘sound symbols’ are simply letters and, yes, Josh and Megan have known their letter sounds for a long time. However, some of the symbols represent digraphs or the sound of certain non-phonetic sounds that I want to ensure that they recognize quickly and easily before we move any further into the program. A full review of Rocket Phonics will be coming in a couple of weeks.)
We played by having the kids roll the die, walk that number of squares (beside the squares, not on them, since I’d like them to last a while) and say the sound they landed on. That seemed a bit easy, so we later changed the rules so that they had to say each sound between where they were and where they were going, stopping if they missed one.
That look on Megan’s face is: Oh, no! She’s taking pictures! They know that a larger percentage of my pictures wind up on my blog.
You could play this game with any number of facts: math, vocabulary words, history or science questions are just a few that come to mind. It keeps everybody moving and engaged, which always makes learning facts more fun.
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
Love those spontaneous ideas that end up being so much fun! This giant board game could be used in so many different ways, too. Thanks for sharing the idea. I love your big die!
~Erin
This is cool. lol Thanks for sharing.
ok i'm totally stealing this idea. the giant die makes it so much more fun! 🙂 THANK YOU!
that's awesome! and smart: life-size cards would take a few hours just shuffling…
I made one of these for youth group once– but for the board we used canvas with duct tape and spray painted symbols so I could change out the cards and use the same board. It was so much fun! I never thought of doing it for phonics, my kids would LOVE it.
I've done stuff like that before. It's so much fun and the kids love being the game pieces.
How neat! We did something similar with math facts but your giant dice looks sooooo much more fun! Great job!
Great idea! My girls would love this. Thanks for sharing!
This looks like fun! The giant dice is amazing and makes it all the more exciting for the kids!
This is a great idea. My daughter always learns so well using games.
I love your blog! I'm a sweet tea addict too! 🙂
My kids love games. We have played floor games before but never with a giant die. I will have to try that.
Blessings,
Dan
My kids would love this – the giant aspect of it would be really appealing!
I love the idea of a giant die. We have two large dice about 2 in x 2 in that we use for school games but a giant die with the floor games is perfect. 🙂 Thanks for sharing this idea.
this is soooo cool. a great idea. my children will love that. I will definitely give it a try. 🙂 I can see many variations of the same game. thanks for sharing. Tereza