Saturday, June 27, 2015

Whales, Whales, Whales

Fun learning board game.


The Game Board


Two blue file folders were taped together on the reverse side. 

I am going to be remaking this board as the duct tape I used has caused a reaction over the years and spoiled the board, though the children do not seem to mind it at all. I have used clear packing tape and it has never caused this reaction, but I was out the day I made this. Lesson learned!

The whales were copied from an old book I owned. I enlarged them a bit. The cute bubble-look stickers are those reinforcements to be used when the holes in notebook paper tears.  NOTICE that the path is a circular one, which means it has no beginning and no end.

Fun Fact Cards

 The fun fact cards are interesting information about the 10 whales on the board. There are 5 cards for each whale.
These cards are also part of the fun facts deck. Even though the cards appear to be a different color, they are not. These are the cards that make the playing so much fun. Our rules are:  

Draw - the player blindly selects a card from other player's fanned out cards.
Give - the player chooses which card(s) to be given.
Exchange - each player chooses which card will be given.
Pass - each player chooses the card to be given. 

Whale Cards 


There are 5 of each of the 10 whales. There are also 12 WILD WHALE CARDS.

To Play:

Both decks are shuffled and placed in separate draw piles. 

Players each select a game piece and place it on any of the whales on the board.

In turn, a player draws the top Fun Face card and reads it aloud. He then follows the directions about moving on the card. Play is in a clock-wise direction.

Every time a player lands on or crosses a whale on the game board, he draws a whale card from the draw pile. If the player crosses on a backward move he draws a whale card. On his next turn if he again crosses the whale he collects another card.

THE OBJECT OF THE GAME:

Be the first player to have one of each of the 10 whales in their hand. (For a shorter game the number of different whales can be lowered.) As soon as a player has the required whales (he may have extras too) he lays the whale cards down. 

THE STRATEGY:

The older children love this because of the extra strategy. If you remember which cards players have drawn from you or you gave them before, it is a wise play to give the the same one again. 

WILD WHALE CARDS:

These whale cards can be used as any whale needed. The children like to play that you can use as many WILD cards in your set of 10 as you need. 

THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES of this game format. 


Thursday, June 25, 2015

Horses Mat & Cards Game

This is an extremely easy game to make. It is not as inexpensive as most games I create. However, it is so perfect for my horse-loving granddaughter Diana.

I bought two of these mats from a local learning store. These are also available on Amazon. These mats are heavily laminated so they are very durable. I cut the horses apart using a paper cutter. Both sides lined up perfectly so the backside cards can also be used. The back side is black & white. 
We use the other mat as the playing board. The cut-up cards are placed in a draw pile. 

Even though there are black and white pictures on the back of the cards, they do not match what is on the front. We could do like we did on our Presidents Mat Game and use a bucket to hold the cards to be drawn.
These would be the fronts of the cards that we would be using so the cards would be flipped over so players could not see the horse being drawn.
In turn a player draws one of the cards, and reads the name of the horse. She finds the matching picture on the mat board and places one of her colored chips on the space. Standard poker chips are just a perfect size for this. 
The matching pictures are easy to find as the horses on the mat are in alphabetical order which gave Diana another skill to practice as she played. (Grandma loves it when I can sneak a second skill in and no one even notices. Of course this was not something I planned, it just worked out because of the way the mat was made.)

We decided to see who could be the first to get three in a row vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. It happened quickly so we didn't declare a winner, we just continued playing. When we finally had our board filled we looked over each row and stated who had how many in a row. So there was no emphasis on a winner (which is good, because then there must be a loser and Diana does not lose well). 

So we had a lot of fun and she wanted to play again. She has continued to get out the game and want to play some more. We are both getting more familiar with these horses.

Time for a variation of play:
For this variation of play the black & white sides are going to be considered the front of the cards, These would be flipped over so this side was not showing. 
So we decided to use the black & white side of the cards which do not contain the names of the horses. We had to look very carefully at the pictures to make the matches, some are quite similar. 

We will be looking for other ways to play and use the mat and cards. But for now, she loves this game.

Special Bonus: Time alone with Grandma which makes us both happy.