Leveling Up Learning: Designing Interactive Board Games!

Mrs. Moss's gifted fifth graders just took game night to a whole new level.
Students recently stepped into the shoes of game designers. The mission? Create a completely original, physical board game from scratch. But there was a twist—they had to integrate multiple layers of complex design and technology.
The young inventors had to engineer:
  • Custom 3D Game Pieces: Designing unique player pieces to navigate their game boards.
  • Task Cards: Writing penalty and reward task cards matching the theme of the game.
  • Interactive Sound Effects: Programming and wiring their boards using Makey Makey systems so that landing on specific spaces triggers real-world audio.
Watching these students collaborate, code, and problem-solve through structural and technical glitches was awesome. Everyone worked through their pitfalls and came out on top. They didn't just play a game—they engineered an experience!
*** Find your student's board game name and check out their awesome work! Most have a video included as well! 

Prehistoric Space Race




Disney Dash

Complete with Tower of Terror, Splash Mountain, The Castle, Slinky Dog, and more!


Notice the copper tape attached to the bottom of the characters (above). This allows for the player pieces to be conductive with the board.


All of their sounds had to match their theme. I love how they used the 'splash' sound for Splash Mountain!


Hungry Hangout





Fairyland










The Trials of the Going Merry


Race to the Top






Aggravation!

This was a sentimental game for this student, as he said he and his dad used to play a game like this. He wanted to create a real-life version of their game so he could take it home and play with him :)






Food Land









Rainbow Castle




Fortnite Battle with Peely





Dinosaur Dash














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