Giant Board Game
This can be adapted
for any situation, just by changing the questions. (e.g. sets of Ireland,
England, Scotland and Wales, or Guiding history, general knowledge,
international,
rhymes, the Guide laws etc.).
To create
the board:
Need at least 5
different colours of printer paper and white. You need at least 50
- 70 sheets (but you don't have to put all the squares out, it depends
on size of playing area) of mixed colours with a few plain as well.
Shuffle well.
On your PC, in Word,
type the numbers 1 to whatever you've chosen. Set the page layout
to landscape and then enlarge the numbers until you will be
printing one number per page. Stack your shuffled sheaf of paper in
the printer tray and press print. Go and make a pot of tea.
(If you don't have a printer a marker pen will work just as well,
just you don't have time for the tea.) Once the printer was done,
stick each of the
sheets into a plastic slip, they've lasted very well and can be clipped
neatly into a folder for storage. You could also laminate them if
you have, or have access to, a laminator.
While making the
tea you can start thinking of questions. Choose 4 of your
colours to be different categories, and one to be fitness (or forfeits).
You'll need about 30 questions or tasks in each colour band. The plain
white
sheets become "safe" spaces.
You also need to
find a giant dice from somewhere (or preferably several).
Either find a friendly carpenter, some really thick cardboard or someone
with small kids or a dog who has the rubber squeaky sort. (Test the
squeaky sort to see if they are fair, they might need weighting so
as not to get 6 every time).
This last bit can
be omitted if you want to keep it fairly easy. The points scoring
goes 2 points for a correct answer on your own and 1 point if you
have to ask the rest of your team or look it up. Either find some
tokens to
act as points or for an extra challenge do the following:
Get a big copy of the world badge (black and white, there's probably
something on BOGUK), and photocopy several. Cut each into 6 pieces
along the same lines. Then they get 2 pieces or one piece for each
question answered right but it's the number of whole world badges
at the end that decides who wins. So if they are not paying attention
and keep picking bits at random they may end up with lots of part
ones and no part threes and still lose despite answering the most
questions.
To play:
Lay out the board squares in a big loop, oval or round the whole building
or whatever you wish.
Get each team/six/patrol
to find something to be a counter (teddy, shoe,
pencil case) Throw the dice and count on starting from any square,
they
don't need to wait for another team to finish their go first. Depending
on
what colour they land on answer a question from that colour, or a
fitness
challenge if they have landed on the fitness colour. If the person
gets it
right on their own they get 2 points, if they have to look it up or
ask the
rest of the team only one point. Take it in turns to answer the questions/do
challenges.
hen everyone appears
to be getting bored stop and count badges or tokens to decide winner.
If the questions
are on cards ask them to put the question they have just
answered on the bottom of the pile and it can go round for some time,
half an hour easily but longer if they are still having fun.
To make a change,
change the questions, the fitness can stay the same but may need to
be tailored for participants. (E.g. remove the piggy back challenge
for Guiders!!)