Game Pieces

I have a lot of quick games that I do that use game boards - Aus der Stadt and Clue are examples, but I have several others that use this generic game board.  The games are easy to set up... if you have the right material handy!  

Coins and Dice:

The easiest way to move around along a game board is to use dice or coins.  Dice are pretty self explanatory - you roll and then go a certain number of spaces.  If your game board is too small and rolling a six twice in a row would effectively end the game, I restrict movement by saying that rolling a 1 or 4 moves you one space, 2 or 5 moves you two spaces, or 3 or 6 moves you three spaces.

Keep these big guys around for full class games - it adds a bit of extra fun :)

Coins are good because students typically have one laying around or you can collect pennies to use.  For the actual movement, students flip the coin.  Heads means go one space, tails means go two spaces (or vice versa).  

Game Pieces:

Usually I just tell students to find something small that they can use as game pieces.  Erasers, pen caps, paper clips - all of these work really well.  I do, however, keep a box of game pieces in case students can't find anything.  These are just random objects I've collected - a set of animal pieces I got at Target from the dollar section, buttons, game pieces that students have turned in with projects but never gotten back.  I've also recently started using Pompoms - they're colorful and take up little storage room.  

Little animals, old toys, buttons and pompoms make great game pieces

You can also buy various assortments of game pieces online or at stores, but I like the random little objects - students request certain ones (the Batmobile and the pigs are particularly popular).  No matter what you use, just make sure they're small enough to make storage easy (and to make them more flexible for lots of different games - a lot of the boards I use require small pieces).

All of it fits in one little box

Have fun!

- Frau Leonard