A New Christmas Game

I have always loved inventing new games or 

adapting old ones.  Yesterday Claire helped me fine-tune

a new Christmas game based on our vintage Pound Puppy

board game.  Evan was actually the first to play this, but

unfortunately, I got no pictures until later.

My idea was to place some Frosty the Snowman and

Santa Claus figures all over this plastic floor map,

which came with an educational play set years ago.

We could then roll either 1, 2, or 3 dice to try to land

on one of the Frosty or Santa spaces.  Depending on

how far you needed to travel, you might roll any number

from 1 to 18.  When Claire "rescued" a playing piece,

she placed it in this wicker sleight.  I used a Christmas

railroad car for mine.

The Santas and Frostys were borrowed from a

Christmas Tic-Tac-Toe game. We made a rule that

you could take certain short-cuts, such as down a

stream from one "bridge" to another.

By the time Claire asked to play again, we added

in a slew of Neopets, which gave us a lot more

targets to rescue and improved our odds of rolling

a useful total.

It was a ton of fun, and I imagine we'll play it again

next week, probably tweaking the rules as ideas occur.

Have you ever made up a game?  It's very satisfying.

You might encourage your children to invent or

adapt a favorite game for the Christmas season.

GO FOR IT!