Printable Game Board Templates

Making your own board games for the classroom or the home is a great way to extend the learning or just personalize a game to make it about your classroom or family or your interests.

While it might seem difficult to make your own board game, there are actually a lot of templates out there that will help you get started. Whether you want to make a sight word Monopoly game, a math facts game or a fun action game where you fill in the blanks, here are some resources to get you started.

If you don’t want to have to come up with the full concept for the game all by yourself, try this printable homemade board game from Twitchetts. It includes a printable game board kids can color in (and you can connect as many as four of them together to make a longer game if you want) as well as printable, fill in the blank action cards (go forward or back x number of spaces, act like a fill in the blank, etc.). You just need dice and markers (mini figures are a great option).

Hobby Lark has a collection of 14 printable game boards you can use for all sorts of projects. There’s a Monopoly style board, trail-like boards similar to Candyland, a Trivial Pursuit board (with customizable game cards), snakes and ladders, a checkerboard and more.

Let your kids design their own games with these printable board game templates from Surviving a Teacher’s Salary. The post suggests using them to have kids design a game based on a book they’ve read, but you could use them in lots of different ways.

And if you just want it all done for you other than the printing, Musings of an Average Mom has collected a bunch of fun printable games you can use. There are games about the weather, sight words, pets, colors and shapes, letters and so much more. You’re sure to find something your kiddos will enjoy here. I love the alphabet slides and ladders game from Tiny Me.

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

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