Loyal readers of my Board Game Friday posts will probably recall that my son is currently obsessed with the Ticket to Ride family of games (for proof, check out all the games we played last month)! In fact, he recently finished off his latest "chore chart" for which his big prize was Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails (this you may remember from a board game Math Trade I did last month). Given that he still loves the Ticket to Ride series, I went all out earlier this week in making my son's next chore chart*.
*Note: I say "chore chart" but it's mostly things that my wife and I are trying to get my now five-year-old to do more on his own. You'll see in a moment.
A couple of nights ago, I spent wayyyyyyy too long creating a custom Ticket to Ride board - and corresponding tickets - for my son's next chore chart. I ended up printing the big board on six different pages of cardstock and then after some cutting and taping I ended up with one large board for him.
The tickets were also printed on cardstock and cut out. I tried to make sure he needed to get to lots of different locations on the board - after all, the goal here is for him to complete his "chores" and by doing so he gets to add trains (i.e. stickers) to the board.
Speaking of his chores, here's the list:
Yep, like many young kids my son kind of hates eating much in the way of healthy vegetables as well as meat and fish. I've found having the chart (with some sort of long-term prize) a good way to motivate him...and once in a great while he even says he wants some vegetables simply to make more progress toward his prize!
I was up until well after midnight the night I made the game but seeing my son's face and excitement the next morning was 100% worth it! Now, let's see how long it takes him to reach his next prize (which is another board game but thankfully not a Ticker to Ride game)!
For those wondering, special thanks to this website for help making the board and tickets. I used what that site generated and then went into Canva to add the rules and some of the other flair to the game board. I'm certainly no artist myself but I was quite happy with how things turned out. The only thing I wish I had was appropriately sized train car stickers. Instead, we had to settle for happy face stickers because that's all my local Wal-Mart had that would work (my son didn't care - he simply wanted to get his first stickers on for getting dressed on his own in the morning)!
Holy crap this might work on my kids and they're in Jr high. (well we'd need to swap out the 3-car chore)
ReplyDeleteThis is truly one of the most awesome things I've seen this year. Seriously... this is like Parent of the Year stuff.
ReplyDeleteIs there a site like Teachers Pay Teachers for parents? If so, I think you could make a lot of money selling this to other parents. I don't have kids, but I've been around friends with children who could definitely benefit from something like this. In fact, if I taught 5th or 6th grade again... I could see myself modifying this and using it in the classroom. It would involve teaching my students the game and getting them interested in it... but I feel like that wouldn't be too hard to do. Great stuff Chris! Very, very impressive.