New board game layout

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 6:16 pm

There's a new style of board game available at Tools for Educators.

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Like the other snaking board game styles, you can create game boards with images only, images and 4 text boxes or all text.

How to play the game:

The game is optimally designed for 4 players.

The teacher designates how many laps the students need to run. Let's say 5 laps.

- Each player places a game piece in one of the four start positions.
- One player rolls a die and enters the game board in a clockwise direction.
- When a player lands on a spcae they complete the learning target associate with that space.
- Play moves to the next player.

- If one player lands on another player (lands on the same place another player is occupying.) The other players man gets knocked back to their start position and has to restart that lap.

So if I was midway around on lap 2 and you landed on my marker/space, I'd go back to my start position and start over on lap 2. You would continue from the spot where I was.

- Each player has to go around for 5 laps. On the fifth lap the player can enter their goal, the finish circle.

They do not need to roll an exact number to enter the goal, but that kind of rule is up to you or the group.

- The first player to finish the game is the winner.

You can continue until all racers have finished or you can stop the race when one crosses the finish line.

I have some game pieces that I'll be posting later, but if you have any questions about how to play the game, please post them here.

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 6:54 pm

For more or less players:

- 3 players

The game can be played as is with 3 players, just leave one color empty.

- 2 players (one on one)

The game is fine as is with 2 players but you won't have as many 'knock outs' with just 2 players.

You can have each player play two markers. Some one player will be blue and orange, while the other player will be purple and green.

- 5-6 players in a group (for 6 you might want to break up into 2 groups of 3 and play that way)

You can just make new start and finish positions at the top and bottom of the board. There is a center block at the top and the bottom. Just draw one the game board and play as written out above.

With more players you'll have more knock outs, so you'll probably want to decrease the number of laps need to win the race.

- more than 6 players?

You should break this group up into two groups Smile

Even 6 players is a lot and it will take a long time for play to come around.

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:27 pm

I hope to post a summary of all the board games I have peppered around the Web to the games section of this site - www.mes-english.com/games.php

However, in the mean time here are some game pieces for the Knock Out Race. The game pieces have lap markers you can use and actual game pieces to move around the board. There are race cars, motorcycles, motorboats, and snowmobiles to choose from.

And here are some printable stickers for the Knock Out Race with Champion, 1st place, 2nd place and 3rd place stickers as well. They are on www.stickersandcharts.com (also my site) but they do match this game.

MES-Member Joined: 10 Nov 2009 Posts: 13

I love this new board game thanks!!!!

MES-Member Joined: 15 Jul 2009 Posts: 1 Location: Japan

Great work, and engaging game ideas!! However, some times, even with your great selection of images and themes, there may be a focus piece of vocab or 2 needed to make a great game cover more accurately our targets. could an image import function be addad in the construstion phase of the board game maker pages?

All in all however this is a fantastic site, an a godsend to busy teachers!!

Thankyou, NZDEANO.

MES-Zealot! Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 361 Location: Japan

what a great idea

Thanks again Mark, you are on the nail again

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:56 am

nzdeano wrote:

could an image import function be addad in the construstion phase of the board game maker pages?

I've been thinking about that but at the present, it's just a nightmare. The pictures would need to be resized or would get squashed. Also, would teachers just need a couple pictures and thus require a personal image folder, meaning login, account creation, database work ... All things I don't want to bother with.

I try to make sites that are easy to use and fast. I want teachers to come to the site and make a worksheet in a couple of minutes. If it takes any longer than that, teachers could just make it themselves and save the time. Additionally, it would be just what they wanted, verses just what they can make on the site. All those options prior to actually making the worksheet are time consuming (and frankly would drown my inbox with tech. questions, mostly because I don't write very good instructions)

So, unfortunately, I won't say it's not on my mind but it's not high on the list. I will keep trying to make the site more user friendly if I can, though.

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 10:04 am

Sorry, what I meant above was that mixing your own images and MES images is the hard part. What you might see first is an option to use all of your own images. That's a bit more doable.

MES-Member Joined: 17 Nov 2009 Posts: 5

Thanks again Mark. I know you have many brilliant ideas of teaching. Board game is one of this.

Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 3:07 pm

massively awesome!