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2010 Year of Biodiversity

Board not bored!

Boomerang (no sticky tape!)   Te Hanga Waka (Canoe) Te Hanga Pataka (Storehouse) Pikau (backpack) Challenge   Ginger Beer  Skateboard Ramp Challenge

BP CHALLENGE HOME

Prepared BP Challenge: Board not Bored !

Years:  2 - 8
Strand:  Technology, Mathematics, English
Key Competencies:  Thinking, Using language, symbols and texts, and Relating to others. 

Background:

Board games have a long history, right across the world. Games often use simple materials like counters, dice and shaped pieces. Examples of such games include: Backgammon, Chess, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, Chinese checkers, Mah Jongg, Cribbage, and Dominos, to name a few.

To design a board game you need to employ many skills: creative thinking, logic, strategy, and lateral thinking. Inventing and playing a board game helps students with:

• number and shape recognition, grouping, and counting

• letter recognition and reading

• visual perception and color recognition

• eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity

Task:

To design a board game using the materials below within 30 minutes, that can be then ‘played’ in a group of 2- 4 players.

Materials:

• Cardboard – 4 cereal cartons opened up will do or 1 big piece
• Felt pens
• A4 Coloured card – 4 different colours
• Scissors
• Ruler
• 10 blue bottle tops
• 10 black bottle tops (or other colour or size)
• 1 dice
• Stapler
• Sticky tape

Materials can be changed to suit. You might also want to provide beads, more dice etc. Or even stipulate a theme, like fair trade or ecology.

Judging:

Time will not permit the judge to play every game till a winner is found so students should instead do a presentation of their board game that takes 2 minutes, followed by 30 seconds where the judge can ask questions.
The judge will award up to 5 points each for:

For teachers:

This challenge has broad applications - you could use it as a precursor to teaching number strategies or designing and testing prototypes