Tuesday, 7 August 2012 - Race Track Game

Today's activity - Making a Race Track Game

You will need the following:
- 6 little toys or coins, something like Matchbox cars or Little People would be good
- A long sheet of paper, or several sheets taped together
- A marker and a straight edge (ruler)
- 5 dice

1.  First, you need to make 6 "lanes" on your paper.  Make sure the lanes are wide enough to have one of your little toys go through it.  If you have a long paper, make the lanes go all the way down the paper.  If you just have a few sheets of regular paper, tape them together first, then draw the lanes (otherwise the lanes won't match up). At one end of the racetrack, label the rows with the numbers 1 through 6.  (My race track is bent from being folded, sorry!)

I made mine for a party, so I made the spaces with black tape so it would look nicer.  I also added a Start and Finish line.

2.  Next, you will make lines going across your paper to represent the steps your toy will get to take towards the end of the race track.  I recommend your track be at least 12 spaces long, 20 would be fine, too much longer will make the races boring.  Make sure the spaces end up being big enough to contain your toy racers.

Duck racers!

You are ready to play!  Place your racers so there is one in each lane.  Roll the 5 dice.  For each dice, the number that is face up gets to move one space.  So if you roll 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, then the racer in lane 1 gets to move one space, the one in lane 2 gets to move one space, lane 3 gets to move three spaces, and lanes 4, 5, and 6 have to stay put.  Pick up the dice and roll them all again.  The first racer to go off the end of the track wins!

This is a good game to play at a party; you can have people pick which racer they think will win.  You can even play a life size version at a party by taking a bunch of papers and laying them on the floor in 6 lanes.  Have actual people stand on the first paper and move as you roll the dice.

Variation:  I like to put the dice in an empty and cleaned butter tub, and cover it with saran wrap.  Then you can turn the cup over and shake up the dice, then turn it back and let the dice land in the bottom of the cup.  You can look through the saran wrap to see them.  This way, you don't have to worry about losing any dice!  (This roll was 1, 2, 2, 5, 5)

If you make a racetrack, send in a picture and I will post it here!