STREAM Activity: Design Your Own Board Game

Learn letter and number recognition through a fun game!

Activity best for children ages 4 and up

Finding games for younger children who are trying to learn their letters or numbers can be a challenge. Today we will be making a letter and number recognition board game to help children learn in a fun and effective way.

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Materials:

3 Pieces of white cardstock

2 Pieces of construction paper

Color pencils

Markers (optional)

Pencil

Glue

Scissors

Tape (optional)

Dice (or you can make your own out of paper)

Small object (shells, coins, etc) to mark your spot on the board game as you play

Guiding Questions:

What are some questions you can ask when making your board game cards?

Instead of numbers and letters what other thing can you add to your board game?

Directions

Step 1

Start by gathering your materials for your board game!

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Step 2

Glue the ends of three white cardstock papers together to create a bigger cardstock page. Tape can also be used to hold these pages together!

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Step 3

Draw your template for your board game in pencil and then outline it with a marker. Our board game is a round circular shape but yours can be any design you would like. Don’t forget to add a ‘Start” and a ‘Finish’ for your game.

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Step 4

Add the details to your board game. Our board game is about number and letter recognition so we added random numbers and letters to our board. Once you’re done you can color it to make it fun and bright!

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Step 5

Time to add your game instructions! You will write down your instructions somewhere where it’s visible to the players. Our instructions are:

  1. Start at letter ‘A’
  2. Roll the dice
  3. If you land on a number tile, grab a yellow card
  4. If you land on a letter tile, grab a purple card
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Step 6

Finish off creating your game by cutting out construction paper to make your cards. Our yellow cards will be for number tiles and our purple cards will be for our letter tiles. An example of a yellow card can be “What two numbers add up to this tile?”. And an example of a purple card is “What fruit starts with this letter?”

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Step 7

Now your very own number and letter recognition board game is complete!

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Grown Ups-Are you looking for more ways to extend your child’s learning? Check out these extension activities to build upon today’s STREAM activity!

Reading Connections

Chicka Chicka ABCs and 123s Collection by Bill Martin Jr.

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Real World Connections

The Chicka Chicka books are all about recognizing letters and numbers. Go outside and count how many trees you see!