Kids and Adults Will Love this Paper Version of Tetris

I’ve been doing a lot of posts about games lately (see also my post about printable board game templates) because I think games are a great activity when it’s hot outside. Or cold outside, depending on where you live. Or it’s raining. Or really any time you just need something to do.

I never really got into video games as a kid (or as an adult, other than a couple I play on my phone to pass the time) but I did always like Tetris. Did you know you can play a Tetris-like game without a screen?

One Mama’s Daily Drama designed a printable Tetris board, complete with brightly colored shapes like the classic game.

You can play it a couple of different ways. Start with a stack of shapes and try to put them together like you would in classic Tetris. Then you can either move the pieces down as you fill rows, or just play until the board is full and you can’t make any more moves.

This is fun as a solo game (and would be great for a road trip if you laminate the pieces for durability) but you can also print out multiple sets and have people challenge each other to see how many pieces they can use before they run out of space or how long they can play moving the full lines.

It might also be a fun challenge, instead of drawing shapes to place in order, if you worked with the shapes like a puzzle and tried to fill in as much area in your board as possible using whatever shapes you want.

I think this would be a great one to add to your printable games arsenal, and kids and adults will both want to get in on the fun.

You can grab the printable Tetris game pieces from One Mama’s Daily Drama.

[Photo: One Mama’s Daily Drama]

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Board Game Templates You Can Print [Lesson Plans]

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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