The Gift You Never Thought Of: Make Your Own Board Game Kit

Want to give a unique gift to kids that will spark their creative juices and encourage growth mindset? I have the perfect idea for you!

We love games at the holidays, and this year I am trying something a little bit different with my gift guides. A make your own game kit!  It can be a DIY board game kit or all the fixings for a card game! Inspire your kids to invent their own card, board, or dice games with these open-ended game pieces.

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I make it a point to make sure at least one (usually several because I am a nut) family games are under the tree so we can spend the rest of the holiday vacation playing fun new card games and board games. Think how much quickly the school holiday will whiz by when your children are hard at work decorating their own game cards, painting pawns and coming up with clever strategies! (Note: links and images my be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

I’ve also curated all these items, plus more, including “meeples” on an easy to use list over at Amazon. Meeples! Click here to see the guide plus all the extras.

Card Games

Blank deck of cards. Be sure to include a set of permanent markers. What will they make? A standard deck of 52 cards? A whimsical deck? Maybe they will design a specialized deck for a board game they are inventing! The sky is the limit.

Dice

Multicolored and multi-sided dice. What’s more fun that a quick dice game with a standard set of 6-sided dice? Why a self-invented dice game using a 10 sided (or more) set of dice! You can get dice in all shapes and sized to inspire kids to roll away!

Blank dice! Kids can use Sharpies to write numbers, letters or even draw pictures on each side. Alternatively, use stickers to decorate each side.

We love having lots of colored dice so everyone can have their own set during game play. The kids always like having their favorite colors.

Game Boards

Blank Game Boards are essential for creating your own board games, of course!

Game Accessories

Spinners. What I love about these transparent spinners is you can use a dry erase marker to change up how you want to use them.

Chips come in very handy. You can make your own with small wooden discs and paint them the color you want. Alternatively, colored plastic chips are easy to come by and if you want to get really fancy, a box of poker chips will last forever. My kids love using our poker chips for all sorts of activities.

Game Pawns and Tokens

Make pawns out of  wooden game dolls! A colorful paint set will inspire your children to design their own pawns to be used in any game. Perhaps they will paint pawns to represent the family. So cute.  Wooden discs that can be painted also come in handy as game tokens. If you’ve watched any of our game videos, you may have seen our homemade ones.

Make Your Own Board Game Kits

Maybe you’d rather buy a complete kit to inspire your children to make their own board game. There are several available that look like a lot of fun.

Invent the Greatest Board Game, kit from Smithsonian Spark Lab! This kit includes a blank board, game tokens, stickers, a spinner, timer, dry erase markers and more.

DIY Board Games. This set is not so much an “invent your own games” but rather a “put together your own games” set. There are five boards with stickers and pieces to assemble to play popular traditional games like Snakes and Ladders and The Great Game of the Goose.

Don’t forget to check out the full curated list of items here.

More game gift guides:

Stocking stuffer games

Single player logic games

Non-board board games for kids and families

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