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How to make a game out of cardboard with your own hands. With your own hands: board games for the company. Future plans

Previously, every house had a set of board games - chess, checkers, dominoes, loto. These games were played in the evenings by the whole family. Children found simple walking games in magazines. Today, board games for the company are much less common. They are quite expensive, and children increasingly prefer a computer.

Buy board games for kids or…

No one argues about the benefits of these amusements. Board games for children and adults not only allow you to have fun, but also make you think over a strategy, interact with other participants and resolve conflict situations.

Where can you get them? Of course, they can be purchased at a toy store or at specialized outlets. The second option is preferable - the choice is huge, and the consultants will be able to suggest a game that will suit the participants by age and will be able to captivate for a long time. If in your city board games for the company are presented in a small assortment, then you can use the services of an online store.

It is preferable for beginners to choose the most popular games for the appropriate age group. But what if, after seeing the price, you are speechless? I especially do not want to spend a large amount if you are not sure that this type of leisure will take root in your family. You can make your own board game!

print and play

There is a whole movement behind this name. Its purpose is a do-it-yourself board game. In Russian, it sounds like "print and play." And indeed, you just need to download the file, print it, cut out the necessary details - and you can play. Lovers not only copy already famous games but also come up with their own.

The obvious advantage of this method is low material costs and a minimum of labor. This method is also good because you can get acquainted with the rules and elements of the game in detail, try it out, and only then buy it in the store.

But there are also disadvantages - cards and fields printed on plain paper quickly become unusable. They can be glued to cardboard or protected from tearing with adhesive tape, but appearance such crafts are still lost.

Cards can be printed on thick cardboard, cut in a typographical way and even laminated. But the cost of such work may even exceed the price of the game from the store. This method is suitable for those who can print the game for free or at a big discount. A more budget option is cards in the form of business cards.

There is another option - a do-it-yourself board game from scratch, made completely independently.

What you need

To make the game you will need:

  1. A sheet of white cardboard or thick paper.
  2. Scissors.
  3. Glue.
  4. Ruler.
  5. Eraser.
  6. Pencils, markers, paints.
  7. Magazine clippings, stickers.
  8. Scotch.

Instead of player figures, you can use toys made of chocolate eggs, and if a cube is lost, then make it from plasticine. When everything is ready, you can choose a game and start making it. You can do this with the whole family.

Monopoly

Almost everyone has played Monopoly or its modifications. Everyone knows and loves this simple and interesting game. You can make everything you need for the game yourself. You can take as a basis finished game, and experienced players can change and complicate the standard field.

First of all, draw a looped field of play on a Whatman paper. It needs to be divided into separate cells. Now you can draw company cards with prices and rents. And there is room for creativity here. Names may not match. original game. Come up with your own companies, for example, from the "Country of Wizards", or take real names from your area.

You can draw money, use small bills, or simply count the bill on a piece of paper. You can do without a common field - just lay out the cards on the table. This way you can lay out a new field for each game.

If you are not familiar enough with the rules of the game, just copy original version. Pay special attention to the economic model - if you don’t keep the right proportions, then you won’t be able to play, there will be too much money or, on the contrary, they will not be enough .

The board game "Monopoly", made with your own hands, will bring many happy hours to the whole family. You can make it with your kids.

Board game "Labyrinth"

"Crazy Maze" is another game with simple mechanics, but extremely addictive. It was invented 30 years ago, but we have begun to gain popularity recently. Can be played by 2 to 4 players. The goal of the game is to find various items in the maze.

If you are not familiar with this game, read the rules first, watch the introductory videos. The rules are simple and easy to understand.

Let's start with making treasure cards. We will need 12 rectangular cards made of cardboard or thick paper. Draw different treasures on them. It can be jewelry, magic items, clothes, animals. Stickers can be used here, but there must be 2 copies of the same treasure - i.e. 12 pairs of stickers + 13 fake treasures in a single copy.

Let's make field cards. In total, we need 50 square cards made of thick cardboard or paper. On each we draw parts of the labyrinth. 12 cards with corners, 12 - with straight corridors, 12 - with corners and treasures, 13(!) cards of intersections of three corridors with treasures.

We see that there are only 12 treasure cards, and there are 25 treasure maze cards. Redraw the images from treasure cards to maze cards, 6 each for corners and intersections, and apply fake treasures to the rest. This is necessary in order to confuse opponents.

Now let's make the field. This is a simple square made of cardboard, a few centimeters larger than the square formed by the laid out maze cards. On the field, mark the start for each character. The board game "Labyrinth" is ready. In order for the game to last longer, you can strengthen all the elements with tape.

"Walkers"

Do you want to come up with your own game? The most simple game do-it-yourself desktop is "Walker". It is easy to do on a large sheet of paper. Need to draw long route, start and end point. Divide the path into parts denoting each individual move. The preparation for the game is ready.

Now you need to come up with a story in accordance with which the game will develop, supplement it with cards and tasks. For example, for the smallest ones, you can come up with the stories “Competitions in the forest”, “Hares run to mom”, and in games for older children, wizards, fairies, princesses or heroes of their favorite cartoons and books will travel.

Players roll the die and take as many moves as indicated on the die. The game can be diversified by using special cells: make a move back, make a move forward, skip the next move, follow the arrow and take the task card. It can be done just like that, you can set a reward for good performance or a penalty for failure.

How to come up with a plot for a game

Let's take, for example, a plot for the smallest - "Hares run to their mother." Let's come up with a backstory, how hares live in a forest house with mom and dad, every day they go to the forest Kindergarten, and on the way home they arrange competitions - who will run home faster.

You can attach tasks to this plot. For example: a hare saw a bush that looked like a wolf, got scared and made three moves back; the hare ate porridge well, so he has a lot of strength - take 2 moves forward; the hare met a chipmunk - guess his riddle, and he will lead you through his mink; the hare met the grandmother hare: tell her a rhyme, etc. The more tasks there are, the more interesting the game, but there should also be simple free cells.

For older children, a great idea is to make the heroes of the game their favorite characters. A do-it-yourself board game will become doubly interesting if you are familiar with the work and weave it storylines into the mechanics of the game. A quiz element can be woven into a game for older children. For example: a troll is blocking the door, answer his question and he will let you in / take you a shortcut. Questions may relate to the plot of the selected work, or contain riddles, interesting tasks.

At the final stage, you need to decorate the playing field and cards. If you draw badly, then you can use stickers, magazine clippings.

Card cutting. Dust is interesting: it covers everything very quickly in paper production.

I have been asked many times how a box of cut cardboard can cost 1,500 rubles. What's in it?

  1. From the chain of formation, that is, starting from the costs of development and production - this is the lower limiter.
  2. From the economy - how much a person is willing to pay, and what price can be set until competitors gobble up (this is the upper limiter, it also shows what production cost we should fit into).
  3. And from the cost of analogues-substitutes. In our case, handicraft. That is, making a board game with your own hands.
You will be terribly surprised when you come to the printing house with layouts and ask them to be printed. We have three copies of the game for the exhibition are obtained for 20 thousand. Now I will explain why.

Let's start with the box

The size of the box is usually determined by the size of the playing field (and most often doubled or quadrupled).
  • We make our own. Of course, you can take a box for shoes or the Russian Post, but it will be scary and not about the game. The cost of mailboxes is here. As you can see, those for 90 and 120 rubles are suitable for us, but you can keep within 70 rubles (in practice, they get even cheaper - if without a logo).
  • Making for the exhibition. In our case of preparing a game that has not yet been released for the exhibition, we need a full-fledged pasting of the box. We do this manually at our production facility using the existing cutting, ordering the printing of liners in a digital printing house, that is, based on one of the standard production boxes. The cost, including manual work, is already about 1000 rubles.
  • We make it in a printing house as a pre-print layout. This is a beta box, which you need to check how the inscriptions look, whether there are any problems with the image on the corners, and so on, twist it in your hands, put it in our special cabinet in the office with games (like in a store) and evaluate visibility from afar in the layout. For this beta, a sheet of cardboard is printed in the printing house, on which there is a bottom and a sheet with a lid. Then all this is cut out with ordinary scissors and glued with adhesive tape. It is immediately clear whether something needs to be corrected in the layout or whether we give it to circulation. The cost of such work is about 700 rubles. The box is perfect for presenting the project to the publisher, but not for permanent use - it will unstick and tear very quickly, and its quality is far from “glossy”.
  • We do in circulation. Normal industrial boxes have a cost price with circulations of 5-10 thousand pieces, about 40-70 rubles per piece. And this is only the cost for production, excluding logistics and other things. The box for your phone is so strong, beautiful - in the cost, most likely, 150-250 rubles. A box for a hair dryer (ugly) - cheaper than a hundred. For example, our standard box of the Jackal: Treasure Island format with dimensions of 257x257x74 mm, kappa (binding cardboard) thickness of 1.25 mm, ordinary coated paper for gluing, printing and varnish for an edition of 3000 pieces costs 68 rubles (hereinafter, prices ordered by an external author of the game as part of the production of its circulation). But we, of course, print much larger print runs, and it turns out much cheaper.
I poked through the pictures from the presentation of our production, they are very good for explaining, here:


The only point: the photo is not the connection itself, but the application of glue before the connection.

To understand why a box can cost so much, you have to start from afar - namely, with the general issue of box production. Beautiful large boxes in Russia at affordable prices are able to make 4 factories, and one of them is ours in Podolsk. The rest (not from these factories) are shipped from China or other countries. The problem is in the technical process, for example, lid-bottom boxes (self-assembly is cheaper, but much, much worse for large games):

  1. First you need to take a sheet of cardboard and draw a cutting on it.
  2. Then cut out the future constructor for the box (more precisely, two - for the lid and bottom separately). This is done with a bang on a crucible press and is nothing complicated.
  3. Stack boxes. This is already more difficult, because if the boxes are of different sizes (and, in general, you need at least 4 different sizes), then automating this is quite difficult. Therefore, it is done by hand.
  4. Folded cardboard boxes need to be pasted over with paper (pasted) - pictures and all sorts of inscriptions will be printed on this paper. It is impossible to print on the cardboard itself, because the paint is absorbed into it in a completely different way (the offset machine does not work on kappa). If you want beautiful - keep the paper. This is also done in most cases by hand on special machines.
Pasting, by the way, is done not only outside, but often inside the box, especially on the lids, like this:

Are all boxes handmade? Far from it, but a fully automatic line is an extremely rare phenomenon for Russia. We, for example, have our own, but adventures with this freaking creation of a Chinese engineering genius are drawn to a whole post where small children are not allowed. On the third day of commissioning, for example, it turned out that the power relay was exactly under the vat for boiling glue. And this same glue boils, splashes and closes the contacts tightly with splashes. Then the machine rises, and all the glue hardens inside in thin tubes. We made the first upgrade with a children's sandbox bucket - we protected the relay. Since then, there have been many more upgrades of the same level, only slightly more technologically advanced. Now, fie-fie, it works fine.

Printing any sheet is also a non-trivial story. To print a picture on the box liner, you must first prepare the offset film and make an adjustment. It costs at least 15 thousand rubles: first, color separation is done. What it is for: the printing machine is a block the size of KAMAZ, in which four colors are applied in turn to the sheet. The first block is the first color, the second block is the second, the third is the third, the fourth is the fourth. In mixing, the desired shade of CMYK is obtained - from cyan, purple, yellow and black. We also have a fifth compartment - this is for additional processing of our material, such as varnish or printing with a fixed pantone color. So, you need to prepare and calculate everything so that they are applied correctly - this is color separation and adjustment.

Then offset film is made. From the film, the image is transferred to an aluminum mold. These forms need to be loaded into the machine - also not five seconds (but, for a second, newspapers or leaflets of some candidate could be printed there at that time - that is, downtime is paid). Then the fitting starts. To launch a print run, you need to spend about 200-300 sheets for print runs of up to 5,000 pieces. With large runs, there may be several adjustments, conditionally, the adjustment is corrected every hour, because it gradually goes astray. Fitting - this is the accuracy of hitting the color, the accuracy of matching the face and turnover, and so on. At the time of makeready, the printer runs around the machine and slightly tightens the sheet stops, or shifts them, adds a little ink to the section, and so on. We print games for exhibitions in a print run of 50 pieces both in digital and offset - yes, they are cheaper to do in digital, but there will be no quality for display. The number does not allow you to accurately get your face into a turn, it constantly jumps up to 2 millimeters, regardless of the adjustment, digital machines (except for prohibitively expensive ones) cannot accurately position the sheet. In general, solid randomness, disappointment and rather low-quality color (not least because of this randomness). Large-format printing (also a number, but different) - the quality is worse there, but they can print. The price of turning on the machine is 300 rubles (this is even for one sheet). The standard sheet is B3, that is, it doesn’t fit as much as we would like. There are also features of paper - for example, a coated layer must be applied to cardboard. This is done for each sheet of the box, for cards, fields and other components. And this is another simple case when there is no pantone or varnishing.

Knocking out the box is also a surprise. In general, this is a stamp on the lid liner, a stamp on the bottom of the liner and 2 stamps on the cardboard for these boxes. There are curly exceptions. A stamp for a crucible is plywood, in which the desired pattern is burned with a laser, and then knives of a certain configuration are inserted into this pattern, then the knives are glued on both sides with rubber bands of a certain hardness (for different types of cutting, different hardness). If you do not put rubber bands, then after a couple of blows all the knives will be bent - you need to soften the blow, giving such a load on the knife that will allow you to cut through the products, but not deform the knife. Also fitting and stamp production.

Do you think that's it with the box? But no. Now we need a lodgement. It's the kind of thing that keeps the components of the game in place - with slots for cards and so on. You can make it simple and a little scary out of cardboard (it will move away from the walls, small chips will wake up under it, but it is suitable for games from the field and cards). And you can - inflate in the form of plastic.

It is done like this:

  • Handicraft. We take cardboard and just bend it as it will. It turns out, as a rule, not very much, but, in general, it doesn’t really interfere, given that our box is no longer from the game at all.
  • In circulation. You need a form and a special machine. The scheme for the production of a plastic lodgement does not differ much from the scheme for the production of a plastic bottle (only bottles are riveted in millions, and lodgements - in thousands). The cost of plastic - 80-90 rubles. In our handicraft case, cardboard ones are folded for three prototypes. The arithmetic is also simple. Process: development of a drawing, creation of a 3D model, then preparation for the manufacture of a punching die, frames and a punch for mechanical drawing (if necessary), color selection and cutting of the material being processed - the process of vacuum thermoforming of the lodgements. The cost of equipment is on average from 50 to 100 thousand rubles. In total, in a minimum circulation of 1000 pieces, the price for a lodgement is about 80-90 rubles. Another question is that if you make 5,000 lodgements (like we do), then the price may drop to 30-40 rubles.
  • To the exhibition. For a prototype, you can make equipment not from aluminum, but from MDF, it costs 15 thousand rubles. 10 pieces maximum, and the lodgements will turn out to be slightly different in shape. Still need an adjustment. The polymer takes about 30 rubles for each lodgement.
  • At the printing house. In the case of a "household order" in a printing house, a cardboard lodgement in the spirit of "brr" made with manual labor cutting according to the sketch is 200-300 rubles per unit. If it is done correctly - 5000 rubles for a stamp, 2 rubles for a blow (1 blow = 1 lodgment).

Cards

Cards are most often in a box from 50 to 100 pieces.
  • Handicraft. You can take protectors for cards (200 rubles), regular deck in their size (70-100 rubles) and put pieces of paper on top of ordinary cards in protectors - this way the cards can be mixed, and this is how prototypes are usually brought to us. Or buy prototyping cardboard cards and write by hand on them - this is how we test games in alpha.
  • More or less beautiful maps should be made for the exhibition. To do this, we print them on an accurate color printer, take them to a specialized production like ours or a printing house with a tunnel press as in the picture at the top of the post (or, in extreme cases, with a manual corner rounder). We could have done it before our own production, but it’s cheaper to get to the printing house, we are in Podolsk. Then, first, we cut the sheets with printed cards into rectangles, and then we level and round the corners on the press. Such a deck of 100 cards costs from 3 to 3.5 thousand rubles. It looks good, although there are displacements of the face relative to the turnover due to the inaccuracy of printing with a number.
  • For prototype to play or demonstrate to a publisher, so you don't have to bother. You just need to print the cards in a printing house and ask them, or cut the sheets into rectangles with scissors yourself. The cost of 100 cards will be about 2 thousand rubles.
  • In circulation- a deck of 100 cards in the size of 63 x 89, printed on cardboard 260 grams, 4+4, wd-lacquer, and various turnovers will cost approximately 70 kopecks per card with a circulation of 3000 pieces. On two sheets, a maximum of 100 cards will lie. 101 cards - you no longer fit into the sheet - plus an adjustment and all the consequences. Plus a separate corrugation for packaging and laying work. If you have watched the movie war dogs about 100 million cartridges for Kalashnikov, you should understand how important this is.


"Stupid Casual" ordered cards for the Imaginarium from us - more precisely, he began to order after a series of "shaggy" around the edges at another production

Plastic cards will be even more expensive. On the run, the need to accurately match the color of the shirts emerges (this immediately means a very accurate pantone fit). Plus, there are often unformatted cards, for example, very small ones - these are new forms. Again, in our case, the printing house cuts with its hands, in production it is still necessary to adjust the machine - this is quite a long time.

That's all - if the stamp is standard. We have several dozen of them, and some are repeated - to avoid downtime when the stamps leave for sharpening. A stamp for non-standard, taking into account delivery, will be released at about 20,000 and is done in 2 weeks. There is only one factory in the country that is engaged in the production of tunnel dies. They also make tunnel presses, and they also need to sharpen these stamps.

Field

The field is made according to the same principle as the box - from several layers of material. Fortunately, you need to bend it a little, and there is no volume pasting there. Therefore, everything is relatively simple.
  • Handicraft. We take a large sheet of cardboard and draw everything on it, or paste a printout on it. 50 rubles per sheet and 20 rubles per printout.
  • To the exhibition it is better to do this: we print the image on the liner in digital or wide format. We go to the printing house, where they know how to paste (glue) binding cardboard with liners. We cover from the face with our liner, and from the back with beautiful white or black paper. Let our folding field have a size of 500 * 250 mm, width + cardboard - then the price is 550 rubles.
  • For publisher presentation it is easier, as with the box, to print the field on ordinary cardboard - this will be enough to get the right impression of the game. The issue price is 350 rubles.
  • With circulation 3000 pieces of our field 500x250 mm will cost about 56 rubles per unit.


Laminating boxes, the same is often done with margins

rules

  • Artisanally- a pack of printouts, say, 10 rubles per sheet (this is the price of print services at the metro, it's cheaper on your own printer - but do not forget about the price of the printer).
  • At the printing house or for an exhibition: 200*200, 12 stripes 4+4, paperclip = 650 r. Very expensive due to a single print run.
  • In circulation- 25 rubles per piece for 1000 pieces.

Chips

The figurines are difficult to make. Here is an example process:


The final step is casting into a polymer mold, in which the metal turns into a figure.

  • Handicraft: take chips from another game.
  • For the exhibition: you can make figurines on an industrial high-precision 3D printer or cast single metal products not just expensive, but horse-radish expensive. Model, form - or model and normal printer. You can also take typical wooden ones for a prototype, of course.
  • In a circulation of 10 thousand pieces per model. In metal, the most difficult thing is a master copy (made of silver, this is necessary for making a casting mold). Usually the cost of a 3D model and making a master copy is very high. Then a casting run, which does not make sense for runs of up to 10,000 pieces. There is a casting "in silicone", there a figurine in the cost price at the factory is from 20 to 100 rubles, depending on the complexity and size.
  • Less than 10 thousand pieces. It is rational to use a tree here. There is nothing more difficult in a tree than coloring. There's a magical story here. A painting machine (so that the paint lays down without drops, does not flow, does not change color, and then the figures do not paint the table when pressed) costs 20 thousand euros. We traveled around several German factories, looking after used ones. Didn't find it cheap. Then they complained to "Kuzmich" - a local engineer, who lies for half a day under the products of the AZLK plant. He thought about it and said what he would do if we brought him home appliances for analysis. As a result, from parts of a refrigerator and a washing machine, heaps of plywood and pipes, he bungled a Frankenstein monster. Then, a year and a half later, the Austrians came to see how everything works. They were very surprised by the quality of the coloring, which in some places is even higher than the German one. Foreigners almost had an attack there, the second in a day. The first happened when they saw an industrial zone with men before payday.

friable

Cardboard markers, tiles and compound fields are made like this:

Everything else is purchased. Cubes, hourglasses, markers - this is China. In our case, our warehouse stock. Hourglass, for example, in Russia they are made only for medicine (terrible and large). The rest is about the same. wooden cubes learned how to do it here, before it was necessary to have 3 countries in the process. Small-scale bakellite production (this is an artificial polymer stone, escalator steps and poker chips are made from it, only harder) went bankrupt two years ago. We are now going to make cubes at home. Something like this.

That is why a self-made game of the same quality as a production copy costs 5-10 thousand per unit (this is when we take it to an exhibition). If all the stamps are new, then the price would be higher by another 15-20 thousand.

The same in the printing house "by hand" somewhere around 2000-2500 (excluding stamps).

Or the same for 1200-1500 retail on the shelf.

Economic pricing

Taking into account the cost of production, this factor has almost no effect. More precisely, it affects the choice of materials: most often you have to replace plastic cards on paper and come up with something else with figurines. How much people are willing to pay for board games is determined not by production, but by the price of other gifts. The maximum price of normal demand for Moscow is 2000-2500 rubles for a large box with a bunch of everything, for other cities - 1000-1500 rubles. Therefore, everything interesting should fit up to 2000 rubles iron.

Industrial pricing

There is one more thing besides production. Development. You need to draw illustrations (this is at least 50-70 thousand), make up everything, do proofreading, do pre-press work (including color correction and optimally arrange everything on the sheet), do a bunch of logistics, have intermediate and final warehouses for components and finished things, a workshop for drying boxes, a workshop for assembling components inside the box, conducting quality control and much more. Plus a license if the game is foreign or royalties to a domestic author (5-10% of the wholesale price). This part

We have a great idea - a "magic bag" with all sorts of things, which contains handmade games for children that will keep your fidget busy for a long time. So roll up your sleeves and get ready to have a great weekend with the kids with our homemade play ideas for toddlers.

We offer you a bunch of ideas on what you can do with a child at home when he is bored and tired of all the toys a long time ago. At the same time, you don’t have to spend much on new games, it will be enough that you have at hand to make new fun for children with your own hands.

10 DIY games for kids to keep kids busy at home

A selection of great games that you can make with your own hands for your child to keep him busy at home.

drawing illusion

Children love to draw, but frankly, it's always stressful for mom. If you don’t know what to do with your child at home, give him colored and thick sheets, brushes and a small container of water instead of white paper and paints.

He will dip the brush into the water and draw on colored paper. The paper will darken where water gets in, and your child will think he is drawing. Disaster in the apartment does not happen.

Do-it-yourself constructor for a child

What to do with a child at home if he is from one to three years old? Children at this age simply love toys with many details.

For example, Mr. Potato. cut out potatoes from felt, also cut out eyes, nose, hats, mustaches, and other attributes from felt of other colors for him. You can carry it with you in your bag or leave it at home, but in any case, Mr. Potato will bring a lot of joy. best game hard to imagine for kids.

The second option is possible.

Spy bottle - a game for children with their own hands

All that is required is a good rummage in your drawer in search of all sorts of unnecessary little things: buttons, small toys, thimbles, keys. Take a picture of them, laying them out on the table, then put them in a bottle and fill them with rice or other cereals.

When you need free time, give your child a photo and ask them to find all the elements in the picture. Such games for kids can be created with their own hands again and again.

Ice cream stick games for kids

Great way to keep kids busy at home.

Print out drawings of various geometric shapes(triangle, square, rhombus) and let your child, using the picture, try to fold the same stick figure. Unlike counting sticks, which also work, popsicle sticks are not easy to lose.

You can also make a puzzle out of ice cream sticks. To do this, a few more ice cream sticks (or use those for figures, but on the back). Cut any photo into strips and glue to sticks. Your child will be able to put the puzzle together to make a picture. The advantage of this game for kids is that it is not a pity to lose or spoil it, and it is also easy to make a new one.

DIY lacing games

A great idea for keeping a child busy at home is to give him an object with holes in which you can slip the lace. Cut out figures from foam rubber, cardboard or a paper plate, make holes along the edges. Give the child some kind of strong rope that can be threaded through these very holes.

With the same success, you can use cocktail tubes or fluffy wire instead of a cord and a colander (skimmer) instead of cardboard to keep the child at home for a while.

DIY games with plastic utensils

Surely, every mother somewhere at home had plastic spoons and cups from some kind of feast lying around. Of these, you can also make educational games for kids with your own hands.

Take several transparent, white and colored plastic spoons. After that, with a marker, draw the same patterns on one colored and one transparent one. On the remaining spoons, also draw different figures according to this principle.

The point of this game for toddlers is for your child to be able to find two spoons with the same icon and put them one on top of the other. This will not only save you if you do not know what to do with your child at home, but also teach your child to distinguish between figures.

You can do the same with plastic cups. Such games will be able to keep the baby at home for a long time.

stringing pasta

We have all seen what children do somewhere in the classroom, so why not play with dry pasta at home.

Give your child pasta that has a hole in it and a piece of string, after tying a large knot at one end to keep the pasta from falling off. Kids can make beads or just a long, long bunch of pasta in different shapes and colors.

You can also suggest stringing pasta on wire or sticks stuck in a plasticine or foam base. Also, pasta can be replaced with other materials: colored beads or cardboard.


Sorting squares of colored cardboard

Another activity that not only entertains, but also develops. For this do-it-yourself game for children, buy colored cardboard, cut it into small squares of different colors and attach it to a clothespin. Lay out a palette of colors in front of the child and let him try to attach a square of cardboard of the desired color with a clothespin. This is both a fun and educational game for kids.

We model figures with our own hands

To keep your child entertained at home at no extra cost, give them Playdough and toothpicks (there's an edible version of the marshmallow and straw game) and encourage them to create 3D shapes using Playdough to connect the sticks.


DIY cardboard box games

To take a child at home, make him out from under his shoes. The box itself can be turned into table soccer with a pair of cocktail tubes. And the lid goes into the ball maze: just glue ice cream sticks or cocktail tubes to the box.


Sunlight games

Put, put a piece of paper next to it and invite the children to circle the shadow along the contour.


Crafts from colored paper

Colored paper crafts are an easy way to keep a child busy for quite some time. It is not necessary to do something specific, you can simply give a set of cut out figures (stripes, circles, squares, rectangles, triangles) and invite the child to dream up.


water games

A quick way to keep a child busy at home without much effort on the part of adults: pour water into the basin, pour small items (caps from plastic bottles, balls) and let the baby get them with chopsticks, a spoon, a scoop.


obstacle course at home

Take colored tape, electrical tape or masking tape, stick it on the floor in the form of paths and islands. Then, to keep the kids occupied, invite them to pass an obstacle or race toy cars, roll a short ball along the path, blowing on it through a straw for cocktails.


Funny drawings and collages from improvised materials

A simple recipe for entertaining a child at home with drawing. Just give him unwanted magazines, flyers or old postcards, scissors, glue, paper and pencils. Then the child cuts out characters that are interesting to him, sticks them on a blank sheet, and draws what he sees fit.

Such games not only help to occupy the child so that he does not get bored at home, but also develop imagination, train fine motor skills.

Now you know what to do with your child at home, and what toys you can quickly and easily build with your own hands.

Do you want to create your own board game for family evenings or get-togethers with friends? Then this article will answer all your potential questions and provide many ideas and options for realizing the idea.

This article is intended for persons over 18 years of age.

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How to make a board game with your own hands?

Nothing unites and brings the company together (regardless of the number of participants, their age, gender and degree of acquaintance with each other) like a board game. In our time, gatherings, the purpose of which are board games, are back in fashion, because it is great way spend time with family and friends. Moreover, at home, you can create a board game yourself. It is enough just to make a little effort, to realize your ideas, and you will get a unique desktop. About how to make a game yourself, what ideas can be generated, which can be used to create all its aspects, what can be drawn and, in general, how you can design a space, read in this material.

How to make board games for kids with your own hands?

When creating entertainment for children, it is necessary to take into account the age of the child. Children's games require a verified scenario that will interest the child and captivate him for the entire period of time while the game is taking place.

  • first of all, the idea itself is important, around which it will be invented game process, and general details are added;
  • it is also necessary to decide on the scale of the board game, because, for example, for preschoolers, you should create a game, focusing on the location on the floor, as well as on large details;
  • then you should create a sketch of the field with all the auxiliary elements that you are going to use;
  • when testing, it is worth noticing all the inaccuracies in order to make the board game optimally interesting, taking into account the wishes of all participants, regardless of whether middle group age in children or younger.

You can make, for example, a Treasure Hunt game. You will need a playing field, a die and chips.

Whatman can be turned into a playing field. Draw cells for moves on it, think over the conditions when you get into certain cells (like “go back 2 moves”, “skip a move”). Do not forget to accompany each action with a thematic story, for example: “On a journey to a treasure island, pirates attacked you and damaged the ship. It will take time to fix. Skip the move."

Instead of chips, you can use bottle caps, buttons, etc.

If you want to make a desktop that will be of interest to all family members, then you should ask all the direct participants in the action what they would like to see in the finished product. It is important to consider that children will be especially interested in the game process if all household members are involved in it. In addition, a good board game is wonderful for developing communication skills and building trust with your child. You can also create entertainment that you can invite friends to participate in. However, in this case, you should proceed from the interests that are characteristic of the company of people you want to involve in this.

From DIY board game ideas:

  • Puzzle. You print a picture on a color printer and ... cut it into small pieces! Try now all together to restore the image.
  • Monopoly. This game will appeal to the whole family, especially since you make it yourself, which means you think through all the conditions yourself. You can simplify or vice versa, complicate the rules of the classic game.
  • "Tic-tac-toe". We are used to playing tic-tac-toe on paper and then throwing it away. As a rule, a maximum of two can play it. You can improve this game. Take a piece of cardboard or whatman paper, draw a playing field. Then take corks from plastic bottles and draw the same number of crosses and zeroes on the inside. Now these chips can be easily moved around the playing field and used many times. Instead of corks, you can use pebbles, cardboard chips, etc.

How to make board games for adults with your own hands?

You can diversify a romantic evening with your soulmate by inventing a table specially for this. Such games for two can in some way liberate both participants and even bring some freshness to the relationship or bring them to new level. When creating an erotic game, you need to know the character traits of your partner and build on them. However, it is better to test the draft version together to avoid various nuances. It is important to know that entertainment of this kind is not a protracted prelude, it should be aimed precisely at warming up mutual feelings among both participants.

Board game "Monopoly". Do it yourself

Monopoly! How much meaning in this word, even for a person who is not a market analyst! However, no one forbids taking the very principle of Monopoly as a basis, and developing points, cards and everything else on your own, specifically for the company in which you are going to play.

The following are options for other games that you can also consider:

  • « Jackal - Variable game based on pirate motives;
  • “Friday” is a well-known entertainment where you need to stick pieces of paper on your forehead and guess who you are;
  • "Lord of Tokyo" - a classic role-playing board game with a cube;
  • SDA - teach your child the rules of the road;
  • "Crocodile" - a game that is suitable for any company.

Scrabble - do-it-yourself board game

"Erudite", or « Scrabble - classic game into words, which does an excellent job of replenishing vocabulary and teaching spelling. To create it yourself, you will need a magnetic alphabet, but if possible, then wood is also suitable as a material. For this lesson, you will need letters and several A4 sheets with lined cells. You yourself will not notice how this entertainment will captivate you completely and irrevocably.

How to make a board game out of Lego?

"Lego" as a constructor, in principle, has many possibilities for use. Just a couple of Lego sets will be enough to create any kind of board game - from role-playing to football. In addition, you can complement the space by creating a field and a large number of game details yourself from various improvised materials, such as paper, cardboard or wood. With a little ingenuity and awakening your inner designer, you can create a truly fascinating and one of a kind masterpiece of the gaming industry.

How to make board games for the New Year with your own hands?

New Year is not only delicious food, a Christmas tree, various ritual customs, but also entertainment! The very setting of this holiday, described in many works of world culture, allows you to expand as much as possible, creating new year games. In addition, you can come up with and bring to life a whole original entertainment for children's holiday that will captivate children and create the necessary mood. This should always be taken into account when creating various details that will emphasize the atmosphere of the holiday.

If you learn how to make a cube, creating games of any kind will be nothing for you. The cube can be cut out of wood, glued out of paper, or you can use any other material you want. Similar rules work when creating chips, an organizer, a box, and playing field. Let your imagination fly and create your game props exactly as you see them.

DIY educational board games with letters

Educational games should combine two of the most important functions: they should provide knowledge to the child in an accessible form, without complexity and terminology, but at the same time they should also be presented in an exciting way. game form which would make the assimilation of this knowledge easy and simple. For this type of leisure, you should try when working with cards, as they should have a bright design, but not so catchy that the child can be distracted in the process.

How to make a cool board game?

Create Interesting games you need to be able to, so it is important when writing a script and drawing up a layout to consider how potentially exciting it should be in the end. homemade game always has a certain charm, because based on your own experience and imagination, you can create a whole world into which you can lead your child. That is why it is necessary to come up with a setting that would meet all the above criteria. Such entertainment will be interesting for the whole family, and in addition, individual details can be changed or supplemented during the game.

Board game-walker do it yourself

Depending on your creativity, you can create a desktop that belongs to a certain genre.

Below are examples of ideas from which can be repelled when creating:

role-playing game - board game, entirely sharpened by subjective fantasy. Especially for this, you will need to invent a whole world with its own unique races, character classes and other things;

strategy - here all participants will take on the role of military commanders, so you should take into account how the gameplay will go;

sports games are ideal for creating board games. Can be repelled from various kinds sports.

DIY printed board games

PNP (PrintAndPlay) games are always fairly easy to make. For them, you need to find a layout on the Internet (we recommend the Printgames.ru site), which will not be difficult, print and play! In addition, printed didactic games you can create yourself, armed with a graphic editor.

Marina Suzdaleva

It is difficult to overestimate the benefits of board games for the development of a child. After all, this is the development of attention, memory, thinking, fine motor skills, perseverance, speech, and not rarely also the emotional sphere. But what can compare with a do-it-yourself board game for a child or directly with him, and taking into account the interests of the child, his hobbies and better ways perception of information. The participants made 14 boards for their children and share their ideas with us, and some of the materials for printing (links in the text), so that you can quickly play with your kids in exciting games.

The idea of ​​the game came by itself, it’s still too early for us to walk, but we are already playing lotto and memory. I chose pictures of animals and insects that live in the ground. Some we know, some we just met.

The list includes: a mole, a shrew, a ground squirrel, a jerboa, a hamster, an earthworm, a May beetle larva, a bronze beetle.

I chose real pictures. I wanted to give the child an idea of ​​​​what these animals look like. Printed in 2 copies, pasted on cardboard, cut out and play. While all the pictures at once are difficult for my daughter, we play 5-6 pairs.

Tatyana Golovanova, Moscow region.

My daughter and I made a walking game. I only helped her draw the outlines of the Earth and the contours of the continents, she did the rest.

Of course, the game turned out to be simple, but my daughter made it herself and even signed the rules herself and drew arrows. And now it's her favorite board.

Gudimova Olga and daughter Varvara, 5 years old.

Production: I took 4 A4 sheets, lined them with 2x2cm squares, glued the sheets together. Draw the continents.

The game itself: arrange " gems”, according to the number of players, we take figures and put them in Europe, we live there. In turn, we take a card and begin to move, whoever collected the most stones won, if he went out of the field, you stand at the beginning.

Ekaterina Adnodvortseva and children Vanya 4 years old. 8 months and Nastya 3 years old. 3 months, Moscow.

Adventure game "Earth is our home"

I wanted to tell Anyutka about the peculiarities of our planet. The game is made as a route (to enlarge the picture with the board game or the rules - click on the photo).

It leads from our bus stop, through the city, the village, the forest and the field, the railway bridge over the river, lake and swamp, through the mountains, plains, cliffs, gorges, rocks and canyons ...

Next, we will learn the continents, seas and oceans, and climatic zones. There is also a desert where a lizard runs, a caravan moves sedately and cacti and olive trees grow, there is a savannah with a lion, a giraffe and a zebra, there are tropics and a temperate continental climate. The island of Madagascar, where the lemur lives and the hoopoe flies, where the limestone mountains and the suspension bridge over the canyon are located. There is also Antarctica with penguins, seals and glaciers. An ocean inhabited by a jellyfish, a starfish, a shell, blue whale, hammerhead fish, hedgehog fish, octopus, dolphins, algae grow.

The game will also tell about people who explore and study the earth. There is also a climber conquering the top of the mountain. And a surveyor measuring land on a plain. And a diver diving into, where an electric stingray, swordfish and shark live. Archaeologists are excavating, miners descend into the mine, the fisherman catches fish.

Stages of work on the game:

  • The players take turns throwing the dice, rearranging their figures by the same number of points as the number of points on the dice;
  • Black circle - skip 1 move;
  • Red circle - a few steps back;
  • Green circle - a few moves ahead.

The winner is the one who first travels around the Earth and gets to. It is he who symbolizes the connection with the very center, the core - the heart of the Earth. Having passed all the stages of the route, travelers will get acquainted with the features of our planet, and will be able to look into its depths.

Elena Semenova and daughter Anya, 2 years 1 month, Nizhny Novgorod.

I suggest you play miners. Our mine is not ordinary, but multi-level, and on each floor various minerals are presented.

I drew the field (mine and minerals) on A3 paper. In addition, cards were prepared with the number of moves +/- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... and cards with the names of the fossils presented in the game.

Initially, I planned to go down into the mine, but I realized that for our age there would be confusion with +/- signs. Therefore, our numbering of the floors of the mine begins in the very depths, from where the game begins.

I see several options for the game:

  1. The heroes take cards with numbers one by one and start moving along the mine, getting fossils from the floors they stopped on (here you can also use a cube, but then the movement will only be up). The game can be played until one of the participants reaches the surface, or you can immediately specify the number of horses. During the game, you can discuss what we will do with the resources received.
  2. We draw out the name of the desired mineral and play until someone mines it.
  3. We draw out the name of the desired mineral and independently determine how many floors you need to climb / descend.

Kudryashova Nadezhda and Anya, 4.7 years old, St. Petersburg.

Since Vladik loves to play checkers very much, we had no doubts about what kind of board game we would make with him. We decided to make mountain checkers.

In the course of the game, the daughter specified the shades of colors of what was invented or said like this:

  • We remember what happens yellow color and she says: “Bird, she has a yellow breast!”
  • And also says: "Do you know when green water? When there are trees around, they are reflected in the water!”

Memory "Mole"

And I already came up with another game alone - an interesting surprise for Yana. This is the "Krotik" memorial. On the first sheet of the picture it is easier - for small children, then it is more difficult to remember - for older children.

You can download the "Krotik" memorial by.

Larisa Fedotova and daughter Yana.

Daniel and I made a board game - a walker. Very simple - this is our first experience. The game was called "Journey to Africa".

An elephant, a giraffe and a monkey lived in the same zoo. They missed their home and decided to go to Africa. They had to travel along the road in transport (land), cross the mountains - fly by helicopter and plane (air) and sail on the sea (water).

Tired of the mess in the nursery? Tired of endlessly collecting toys for the child?

Glued the road, stickers with different types transport, giraffe, elephant, marmoset and mainland Africa.

Defined the rules:

  • black arrow - go back 2 cells;
  • white - go 2 cells forward;
  • we fall into the circle - we take a card and complete the task.

They came up with different and serious questions concerning the earth and air, and funny ones - jump on one leg, clap your hands, portray how a monkey jumps, and even “wash your hands”, etc. Questions can be changed, added. We took a cube, chips from another game and played today with great pleasure for about an hour.

Daniel said that he would paint Africa later. Thanks for the challenge, I wouldn't have risked doing it myself.

Daniel 5 years 3 months and grandmother Shatalova Lyudmila.

Our expedition on the topic "Earth" has ended, and in order to consolidate the knowledge gained, I decided to make just such an uncomplicated game. You can download the game from .

It can be used both as a lotto, and as “Find a Pair” (picture-drawing correspondence), and as a memory ... We remembered again the structure of the earth - we laid out the soil-sand-clay-stones in order. Played "Where can I find it?" Desert sand; stones - the sea; soil - a field ... We remembered that stones are precious and ordinary, that salt is a mineral ...

Since our printer is black and white, we played with black and white pictures.

Baibulatova Rezida and children Tolstikova Angelina (5 years old), Tolstikova Dina (almost 4 years old), Orenburg.

Anya is also fond of the cartoon "Thomas and Friends", so for our walker we took the map of the island of Sodor (the scene in the cartoon) as a basis. The map of the island can be downloaded from. Printed it on 2 sheets of A4, pasted them on a sheet of A3. We drew a route for the trains: from the depot through the stations, a stone quarry, a castle, a clay quarry, docks, a sawmill and a lighthouse to the finish line.

The rules are standard. Getting on the red one, you need to skip a move, on the green one - make an additional move, on the shaded one - change the route, i.e. move on or take a detour along a longer path, or vice versa cut off along a short path. We drew arrows when you need to "accelerate" - move forward, or move back.

We also glued images of different engines at different places on our route, marking them with question marks. When you get there, you need to "talk to the train" - to guess the riddle. Riddles I picked up on the theme "Earth". You can download by . Subsequently, I plan to make cards with a large number of riddles, questions or tasks on various topics.

Ksenia Tsyurupa and daughter Anya.

Walker "Adventures of the Mole"

For the game we need a cube and chips.

The game provides:

  • skips (when the mole needs to harvest and when the mole finds a treasure chest) - yellow circles;
  • additional moves (when the mole meets a shrew and when he crosses the underground lake on a boat) - green circles;
  • moving forward along the arrows (when the mole finds another move) - green arrow and backward (when a collapse occurred in the tunnel) - red arrow.

The one who gets to the mole hole first wins.

Anastasia Zotova and sons Grisha 4 years old and Andrey 1 year old. 3 months, Vladivostok.

How to make a game We draw a circle with a compass - this is our land. We make another circle around. Between the circles draw circles with numbers. We mark the start, finish. From each number we draw an arrow back. The base is ready. It remains only to find a cube and figures that we will walk with (we had from another game, but you can take chess pieces and toys from kinder surprises, for example, and make a cube yourself).

The essence of the game: we throw a die, walk with our figure, stop at the circle with a number and take the top card with a question about the earth and everything connected with it. If the answer is correct, then we make the next move from this place, but if the child has forgotten something, then be sure to remind him and help him answer, but move the chip one step back along the arrow. The one who gets to the finish line first wins. You can play several times until the children learn the material in full, make new questions to make it more interesting. At the same time, you can repeat in practice some experiments and experiments.

If there is one child in the family, then you can play with a grain of sand or any toy. And sometimes, on her behalf, forget the answer or speak incorrectly, let him help her and at the same time train her attention and memory.

Sample questions:

  • is there water in the soil? How to find out?
  • is there air in the soil? How to find out?
  • what is sand?
  • what is clay?
  • what are the stones?
  • why is the mole blind?
  • who lives underground?
  • Which plant fruits ripen underground?
  • What are the layers of soil?
  • What is the order of soil layers (bottom to top)?
  • what fertilizes the soil?
  • what is the use of soil?
  • who explores the soil?
  • draw the layers of soil.
  • what does soil do for plants?
  • what do animals do for the soil?
  • how do people use the land?

Older children can make questions more difficult.

The game was drawn by Yakovleva Nastya, 6 years old.

Game "Adventures of worms"

The idea for the game came about after Tim was trying to get a couple of earthworms out of the bottom of a foundation pit.

We needed:

  1. a piece of thick paper about A3;
  2. gouache paints and brushes for them;
  3. colored paper;
  4. foil cardboard;
  5. 3 buttons;
  6. glue, scissors;
  7. a piece of polyethylene or a new bag.

First, draw a slice of the earth on paper, add grass, sky and the sun. Then we cut out circles from colored paper the size of a 5-ruble coin - 25 pieces of the main color, 3 red, 4 yellow and 6 blue. The choice of the number of circles depends on the scheme of movement.

Now lay out the circles according to the invented scheme. We have been doing this for almost three years, so the scheme turned out to be non-standard and we had to adjust by drawing arrows of movement.

We are preparing the players. We cut out three worms from foil cardboard and glue each of them on a button for ease of movement.

Again, for convenience, we “laminate” the playing field with a piece of film, or tape, or a new transparent bag, or stationery film. You can play like this, but the buttons cling to the circles and roughness on the wallpaper (we have a wallpaper with a three-dimensional pattern that imitates the heterogeneity of the earth).
We come up with the rules of the game and write them down on a sheet (the picture will enlarge if you click on it). Let's play!

We made this game for Tim with his middle son Artemy (2 years 9 months)

Anna, Timofey and Artemy Vernyaev, Meget village, Irkutsk region.

Did you like board games with your own hands? Save it for your wall to make one of them and delight your child with a new desktop!