Making Games Yourself: The Best Ideas

Games don’t have to be bought – with just a few materials and a little time you can make great games yourself. Here we have put together the best ideas for you.

Children are true world champions in playing, they can spend hours and hours on one thing, without losing patience or having fun. But it doesn’t always have to be the latest news – games can also be made and designed together with the little ones …

Making games yourself: Catch game

• Upcycling is a trend … and a great toy can be made in no time at all from supposed things for the garbage can: All you need is a cleaned PET bottle, cloth, crown cap and a thread (about 35 cm).
• The cut-off bottle can be glued with a piece of fabric or woven tape around the edge so that the cut edge is no longer sharp. If you like, you can paint the crown cap in funny colours and attach it to the bottle neck with the thread.
• Now you can start with the game of skill: With one hand you have to try to catapult the crown cap into the funnel by skilful movement. If you want to increase the difficulty, use a longer string!

Tic Tac Toe

• “Three wins” can be played with all sorts of things – even with mischievous monsters made of screw caps!
• All you need are two different colours and you can paint them to your heart’s content. The “game board” in this case is a piece of light-coloured fabric, which has been divided into even squares with textile paint.

Domino

It doesn’t take much more than flat pebbles and a black waterproof pen … and then you can compete against your children with a round of dominoes!

Don’t be angry with me!

• Here, the game becomes a nice furnishing item in the children’s room!
• On a white wooden table you paint a “Mensch ärgere dich nicht” board. Using a compass and a piece of cardboard, prepare a stencil for the small circles and the large ones at the corners, transfer it to your playground and paint it with acrylic or craft paint. Afterwards you only need figures and dice and you can start!

Foosball table

The score is 3:2 – children against parents … Playing table soccer simply puts you in a good mood! The game is made of a large cardboard box, logs, clay box, string and washers. Players can use clothes pegs and the ball is a simple table tennis ball. Toooor!

Ball-Parcour

• Not only the children, but also the parents can spend hours on end with this, bet?!
• A kind of marble game is made from a cardboard box, cut up rolls of toilet paper and glue.
• Whoever wants to increase the difficulty, determines with numbers in which row the stations must be accessed. The size of the ball also influences the difficulty.

Games and crafts for small children

• The fine motor skills and coordination are not yet so well developed in the little ones. This can be promoted by means of plugging or throwing games.
• For example, take a large cardboard box, cut holes in it and circle them in the colour of the balls you have. Now the children can put the balls into the appropriate hole. Also a kind of simplified mini-golf (but without clubs) and with large balls is guaranteed to be fun for the discoverers!
• Note: For small children, make sure that all games and utensils are large enough so that there is no danger of swallowing!