For Nancy Drew fans, knowledge of the young detective's adventures will be put to use when they play a Nancy Drew mystery board game. However, to make the game fun for those who don't know all the details of every book, the game will provide other questions, so all players can be equally competitive. Creating the game can be fun in itself, and kids can participate in both designing the board and coming up with questions for the trivia cards.
Instructions
Make Board Games on Nancy Drew Mystery Novels
1. Create the game board by making a border of squares around the edges of the poster or foam core board using a black marker. Use the yardstick to ensure the lines are straight. Using a different-colored marker for each of these, label various squares as "Characters," "Plots," "Titles," "Settings," "Trivia," "Missed a Clue; Go Back One" and "Take Another Turn." Draw a question mark on half of a corner square and "Mystery Solved" on the other half. These directions will provide a basic board; however, you can certainly get a little fancier if you choose, by adding illustrations or creating a more maze-like path.
2. Prepare for writing the questions. If the kids who are going to play the game are helping to make the game, let each one create one category of trivia questions, so that the other questions will be new to them. Direct kids to sources where they can review plot summaries of the books to get ideas for their questions. See Resources below for one possible site. If you have a collection of Nancy Drew books, set those out for kids to leaf through, looking for ideas for questions.
3. Divide the cards into five stacks of 19 cards each. Using the same colors you used for the board, write out trivia questions. For example, a "Characters" question might ask the following: "What frightens Helen's Aunt Rosemary in "The Hidden Staircase"? On the back of the card at the bottom, the answer "a ghost" would be written in very small letters. Another, non-Nancy Drew-related trivia question (such as "What is the name of the boy who climbs the beanstalk?") should be written on the back with its answer on the front. On the five leftover cards, make pile toppers; print the name of each category in the appropriate color.
4. Set up the game. In the center of the board, place the five stacks of cards with their matching pile toppers. Use the toppers to cover the questions and answers. Also place the tokens and the dice on the board. If you can't find any tokens from an old game, make some by gluing together various objects, such as a checker atop a domino or an empty spool topped by a button.
5. Explain the rules of the game. Starting on the "Question Mark" space, the first player rolls the dice and is asked a question by the player to her left from the category on which she lands. If she answers the Nancy Drew question correctly, she gets another turn. If she fails to answer the question, she gets a chance to answer the alternate question on the back; however, instead of getting an extra turn, she gets to move forward one space. The first player to reach the "Mystery Solved" space is the winner.
Tags: Nancy Drew, Board Games, Board Games Nancy, Drew Mystery Novels, first player, five stacks