Make a Sidewalk Chalk Game Board

Family games bring loved ones together for laughter and fun.   This chalk game board is great for playing outside.  Your kids will have so much fun with this sidewalk  chalk game board!

Family Games With The Sidewalk Chalk Game Board

Our family loves board games. They’re wonderful for bringing everyone together, having fun, learning and laughing. I think we love them so much because it’s something our entire family can enjoy together, kids and adults alike.

We recently decided to take the fun of board games outdoors by creating one in our back garden. We simply drew a checkerboard pattern using some pavement chalk and that was it – done! So simple and quick to make but it provided hours of fun. We had a great time drawing and coloring the game board together and then came the really fun part of making up lots of different games to play.

Related: Painting with Chalk and Water

How To Use The Sidewalk Chalk Game Board

We began by playing a simplified game of checkers. For our giant game pieces we used paper plates. Our game board had less squares than a traditional checkerboard, but it didn’t matter at all. That’s the beauty of making your own games – you get to make the rules. It’s fun for the kids to work out the rules together and get creative with their ideas for new games and variations on old favorites like checkers.

Games for the Family With The Sidewalk Chalk Game Board

We also played a game of knowledge which was a big hit. For this game, players began by standing in a colored square at the lower end of the game board. I was the “question master” who called out questions to each player. If the player answered correctly, they could move forward one square. The first player to reach the end of the game board wins! For a longer, and more challenging game, you could add a rule that if a player answers a question incorrectly, they need to move backwards. The beauty of this game is that you can adjust the difficulty of the questions to suit each member of the family. For the adults, questions could be about current affairs, music or general trivia. The kids could be asked to spell a word, work out a simple math problem, recall important family dates, the list is endless. We had fun trying silly questions like spelling a word backwards.

The greatest part about this activity was that everyone was playing together and we all had fun making up our own games, the sillier the better. Even a simple race to leap-frog across the colored squares kept us giggling.

More Kids Activities

What family games would your family enjoy playing on this outdoor game board? Do you have other ideas for a chalk game?   For more great outdoor kids activities, take a look at some of these other cool ideas:

• Family Games for the Neighborhood
• Make a Chalk Board Apron
• Homemade Family Games with LEGO
• Watch this video of human dominoes topple over!
• Learn how to make plaster of Paris chalk.