How to Build a Zoo Game
Children love matching games, and a matching game that teaches about zoo animals is easy to create at home. You can start this board game when your child is young and add animals as you visit the zoo or learn about them from books or videos.
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Things You'll Need
- 11 x 14 OR 14 x 18 piece of foamcore board
- Markers
- 3 x 5 index cards cut in half
- Glue
- Small animal pictures (three to five copies of each picture)
Instructions
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1
Draw your zoo on the foamcore board. Create areas for each animal and glue a picture of the animal to the location. For example, your zoo might have a monkey on a climbing rock, a camel in a paddock and a seal in a pool.
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2
Cut out animal pictures and glue them on index cards. For two players, you need only three copies of each picture: one to glue to the board, two to glue to index cards. For three to four players, you need up to five copies of each picture.
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3
Shuffle cards and give each player four. Each player in turn gets a chance to match one animal from her cards to the board picture. Players draw a card to replace each card put on the board. A player who cannot put down a card still draws one. The person with the fewest cards left at the end of the game wins.
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Adapt the basic game to the age of your child. Very young children will enjoy matching animals from an array of face-up cards. For two players, put out only pairs of cards; the first player to have a card puts it down. (This prevents lots of can't-use cards from piling up.)
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Vary the game for older children by gluing animal pictures to the board and making cards showing what the animals eat. The first player to find the animal's food puts it down; the person who has fed the most animals--and therefore has the fewest cards left--wins.
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Tips & Warnings
Your child may want to work on making the game. Let them draw or color the pictures and, if necessary, photocopy enough to make cards. If they have fun making this game, it is easy to make another with farm animals, cars and trucks or any other subject that excites him. The game principles are the same.
This is a game for children up to about age six, so emphasis should be placed on playing, rather than following all the rules. Games that are heavily rule-bound tend to discourage many children until age six or seven.
