A New Game with Wooden Pattern Blocks Created By a Kid!
Sometimes our kids do things that surprise us. There are plenty of times we roll our eyes and feign an interest in their 100th trick on the trampoline. And there are other times when you say, “Wow this is really good!”
One of my kids is always creating something or telling a story. The creativity wheels never stop spinning for this kid. In an hour he will show me the same Lego creation transformed 3 times! Recently he and Dad sat down and challenged themselves to make a new card game and it’s really good and creative.
Wooden Pattern Blocks are a homeschool tool that we have used for many years. They are a flexible manipulative for teaching shapes and colors in preschool and can be used for patterns and fractions for elementary students. You can find many free pattern block printables around the web to use in your homeschool.
Most often at our house wooden pattern blocks are used for building elaborate battle scenes or stacked vertically on our mantle to create a mosaic on the marble wall. So it’s not surprising that pattern blocks came to mind as a basis to build a game around.
Inspiration
Our family plays a lot of card games and board games. It’s been a great way for our autistic kids to practice social skills and stay with the group in a fun family activity Two of our favorite games inspired Shape Farm, Machi Koro, and Settlers of Catan.
Machi Koro is a card game where you purchase resources that earn you money, and you use the money to achieve 4 goals to help you win the game. Settlers of Catan also has cards and resources but also has a board game where you use the resources to win the game. In Settlers of Catan, the game ends when a player uses their resources to accumulate 10 victory points during their turn and they are declared the winner.
What you Need
To play Shape Farm there is no board to play on. You only have a deck of cards to lead your gameplay. The action cards are included in the download with the instructions. You also need some wooden pattern blocks to represent your different resources and some counters to represent your currency. If you don’t have pattern blocks there are some you can cut out and use included with the directions in the download.
If you have your own set of pattern blocks there are so many ways to play with them. You can build pictures or solve puzzles use them for fractions and even to fidget during read-alouds. They are a versatile and open-ended toy, which makes them a great addition to our school materials.
Download the Rules
Each person starts with a pair of resources and a few coins. During each player’s turn they choose a card from the deck and the event affects all players based on what resources they have. Then the player can choose to spend their currency to buy more resources before their turn ends. The game ends when you have gone through the whole deck of cards. The winner is determined by who has the most currency at the end.
We are taking it on as a family project this year to enter it in a local board game development contest in our area that we can join this winter to improve it even more! The contest includes workshops about the game development process and test events where we can gather feedback. We will get to test it with more players and have others help us in developing the packaging and other parts of the game.
Will you help us test it?
We would love for you to be one of our testers as well. Download the game from the store, grab your wooden pattern blocks, and get started. Be sure to let us know how you like it after you play. Your feedback will help us improve the game! Tag us on Facebook or Instagram @insideournormal
