Board Game Template

A track to play on, with the squares already numbered

The path winds across the page from a clear Start to a Finish, with every square numbered and a handful of themed milestone squares along the way. Choose a length and a look.

• Small — 20 squares, 5 milestones. Five minutes.
• Medium — 30 squares and 6 milestones. The default, and the length that suits most classroom uses without anybody getting restless.
• Large — 50 squares, 10 milestones.

Four looks are available. Three of them are themed — space, or jungle, or ocean — and the fourth is plain, which is what to print if the children are going to decorate the board themselves. That is usually the better activity anyway.

The board is only half a game

What arrives is a track. The rules are yours, and that is deliberate — the same board serves a dozen different games depending on what you decide the squares mean.

The simplest version needs one die and a counter each: roll, move, first to the end wins. That works with a four-year-old and takes no explaining.

Everything after that is a question of what happens when you land somewhere.

Making the milestone squares do something

This is where the board earns its place in a lesson.

Answer a question to stay put, or move back three. Draw a card from a pile of times-table questions. Read the word on the square aloud. Spell it. Name a country beginning with that letter.

Because the questions live off the board, one printed sheet covers a whole term of different content. Print it once, laminate it, and swap the question pile each week.

Have the class design the rules

Hand out a plain board and ask what the milestone squares should do. It is one of the better thinking tasks available for the effort, because a game has to be balanced — a rule that sends you back ten squares will get discovered as unfair within one playtest, by the children, without you saying anything.

Playtesting their own rules and arguing about fairness is more mathematics than most worksheets manage.

Practical notes

Counters can be anything: coins, buttons, torn paper, a rubber. A die is the only piece you genuinely need, and the dice net generator prints one if you have lost yours.

Laminate a board you intend to reuse. Two boards taped end to end make one very long game, which children ask for and enjoy far more than the length warrants.

Print at 100% on A4 or US Letter.