Making your own board games at home is easy and is always a lot of fun, especially since making your own game means that you can change the design and theme as often as you like. For this DIY game, we used a cardboard pizza box as the base and painted it with a plain game board, which we accessorised with Playmobil to create this game.
To make the board, first paint the whole of the box white to provide a clean background to paint on and once that’s dry you’re ready to paint on your game board in whatever shape, colour or design you like.
Since the game board is inside the box, you can fold it back closed so that it takes up less space while you’re not playing, and even keep game pieces inside if you want to.
We added Playmobil pirates to give a theme to our game, with pirate figures for playing pieces and the treasure chest on the finish square, as a reward for the winner.
You will also need a nice, whether you make one from a wooden block or just grab one from another game. We have a few giant dice that we keep for using in any game.
We kept the rules of this game super simple: just roll the dice and move along that number of squares. The first player to reach the treasure wins. These simple rules are perfect for my youngest (age 3) to grasp quickly, and gives some fun and easy practise with turn taking and counting.
To extend the game play, have each player take one piece of treasure when they reach the treasure chest, and continue playing until all of the treasure has been claimed. The player with the most pieces will be the winner.
R loved the theme of pirates racing towards their treasure! But the great thing with making a plain board is that you can mix it up another time by placing something else at the finish line, like maybe a space ship or rocket and use space man figures or use knights and place a castle at the finish line – whatever ties in with your little ones interests. Playmobil figures are great for this since they have a lot of varieties. Lego minifigures and other small figures will work perfectly too.
You could also write more detailed instructions on each space, if you want players to skip ahead or go back a certain amount of spaces on some special squares.
More DIY Games
You might also like these ideas:
Follow our Kids Ideas and Activities board on Pinterest for even more
Follow Anna – In The Playroom’s board kids Ideas and activities on Pinterest.
Anna Marikar, mum of four and seasoned blogger, has spent over a decade sharing her parenting journey and passion for kid-friendly crafts and free printables.
Her easy-to-follow craft ideas and practical parenting advice have transformed In The Playroom into a cherished resource for parents.
We love making our own board games. What a great idea to use a pizza box as a board 🙂
#pocolo
This is so clever! I love the idea of making our own board games! I’ll pin this so I can remember to make this with my kids! 🙂
OMG this is amazing! My son loves cars and traffic signs and roads and my husband delivers pizza and would sometime to go home with pizza!
We will definitely try doing this one =)
#pocolo
This is a great idea and a wonderful creative project. I like the idea of using a pizza box. And it turned out colorful yet simple. Great job.
I love this idea! And I bet the kids really enjoy playing a game that they ‘made’ themselves.
This is brilliant! I should save some boxes this summer holiday! Thank you for sharing it with us! #pintorials
What a brilliant idea, going to try this with my children