I like to learn with games, it’s a fun way to cement what you just talked about with your kids, and I’ve been dreaming about a Noah’s ark board game for years. I wanted to have someone wandering around a board game collecting animals. I finally sat down and created my dream Noah’s ark board game to go with my Bible lessons.
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Noah’s ark lends itself to fun games
When I read the story I always come away with lots of questions:
- How did Noah get the wood for the ark?
- How did he store all the animals on there? That led to my Noah’s ark puzzle.
- How did he gather the animals?
That’s what led to my creating this board game. I know he didn’t spend days ahead of time gathering animals as he ran around the middle East.
I’m pretty sure God gathered the animals together for Noah, but it doesn’t say anything in Genesis 6 or 7 as Noah is building the ark or getting ready to get on the ark.
It talks about them bringing more than 2 of certain animals, the clean animals.
Side point,
This means Noah knew what clean and unclean animals are before the Law is officially given. I find that interesting.
Back to Noah’s ark
Genesis 6-9 always brings so many questions for me.
It’s the story of God saving the world through one man, a hint of what Jesus will do, but I have so many questions for Noah. I guess someday I’ll get to ask those up in heaven.
I need to start my list officially, questions to ask when I get to heaven. Included on that list is “why scorpions?”
Putting together the Noah’s Ark board game
In the printable, I shared three different ways to put your game together, somewhat dependent on how you’re going to store it.
Back when I was teaching in public school I loved file folder games. I had a special plastic file folder storage bin I stored all of mine in. If you’re printing off the game to glue it onto a file folder, then print it on printer paper, it doesn’t add all that much in the way of bulk. I’d usually head off to a teacher store or an office supply store and laminate it.
Then I spent 10 years in a portable church, and everything was stored at my house, and I discovered the joy of storing everything in manila envelopes. I don’t know why that worked so much better, but it did. Some I stored in large letter-sized manila envelopes and others I stored in the half-size manila envelopes. When I store it there, I print them off on cardstock and hold it together with packing tape. If I’m feeling extra, which is more often than I want to admit, I laminate this version too.
Recently, I’ve come to like ziploc bags, but I don’t think these store as well, but for a one or two-time use, I always have these in my kitchen for cooking, so they’re convenient. These are also printed on cardstock and held together with packing tape.
I always print off any playing cards on cardstock because otherwise, it won’t hold up for playing.
Noah’s ark board game play
Back in my pre-kid days there was a board game company that didn’t come with the “bits and bobs” instead they recommended you put together a board game kit including pawns, dice, toy money for playing their games. This let them sell their games for significantly cheaper and meant I didn’t have to have giant boxes for each game.
I’m going for the same concept with my games. Scavenge the materials from other games, or just grab what extras you have in your house.
That’s why in that picture up above, it’s a very weird conglomeration of random board game figures, D&D figures, and a cool dragon. I grabbed some of our dice stash for everyone.
Of course, part of the problem was playing it with my teens who were delighting in not playing it as I thought kids would. Superman delighted in collecting animals without ever deliberately going to an area. And while I rolled my eyes a fair amount, he was having fun, and if I didn’t want someone to do that, I really shouldn’t have allowed you to move whatever direction you want (and if you’re playing this with your kids, and don’t like that rule, then you don’t have to include that rule).
But it was fun, you can also see this picture was in the earlier version where the grasslands were green rather than the green/orange I made later. I learned quite a lot as I went through all my various renditions of the game.
More lessons in Genesis
- Genesis Bible lessons
- Noah’s Ark lesson
- Don’t Eat That Fruit! Fall of Man Bible game
- Abraham and Isaac
- Joseph and his brothers
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