My husband came up with the idea to have some kind of board game for our youngest daughter’s birthday party. So with some brainstorming, we came up with a game that was somewhat similar to “Life”.
The object of the game is to get to the end, that’s it. But you have to do it carrying your ‘job’, ‘spouse’, ‘baby’, and while throwing a huge die!
Here are the instructions for building your “Life” Size Board Game:
Items needed:
Large Die (Dice)
Lots of cardboard
Water balloons
Several household items for “jobs”
Toole and stretchy head bands
Foam craft sheets and yarn
Cards (Draw a Card)
Goody Bags for all the winners
“Life” Size Die
I made my dice with fabric and stuffing. Check back later for my instructions to make your own die!
If you want to go the easy route, you can purchase some fuzzy dice or something for a smaller version.
Cardboard
We collected old cardboard boxes from work for about a week. You can also go to a local store and get some. You should have 33 large squares of cardboard for the ‘spaces’ on the board. Each space will be marked with something. Check back later for my board set-up.
Water Balloons
At some point in the game each player has to have a baby. Their baby will be one water balloon. Sometimes during play they will have more than one baby, they still have to make it to the end of the game without breaking their ‘baby’! We drew funny faces on our ‘babies’! (At the end of our game the kids had a blast popping their ‘babies’ on each other’s heads!)
Jobs
Each player will have to choose a job during the game. We picked out items from our home to represent each job. They have to carry their ‘job’ with them for the whole game!
Examples:
Hairbrush - Hair Stylist
Pool Float - Lifeguard
Microphone - Rock Star
Book - Librarian
Hose - Firefighter
Toole and headbands
During the game each player has to ‘get married’. For the girls I cut small pieces of toole (2 foot by 2 foot). These were attached to their heads using some dollar store headbands. Elastic would work too (but the girls got to keep the headbands when the game was done).
Foam sheets and yarn
When the boys got married they got a tie instead of a veil. We cut out ties from foam sheets and tied them on with yarn. (For some reason the boys didn't want to keep these after the game, hmm.)
Cards
Various spaces around the board were “Draw a Card” spaces. Check back later to see what I put on my cards!
Goodie bags
I made simple cloth bags from canvas. We filled these with little card games, chocolate coins and some other stuff. Have fun finding things that have to do with the game of Life and board games in general!
