Pirate's Chest Light Table Game

Ever since Halloween we've loved pirates and pirate play. Beyond dress up, we also have a new pirate ship with wooden pirate dolls and several pirate coloring books. So why not extend our pirate play to the light table?

This recent rainy weather has been perfect for some more light table play as the afternoons have been pretty gray.


For this game I quickly drew a picture of a treasure chest on tracing paper. I also drew a circle divided into half which acted as a spinner. We used a handful of autumn colored flat marbles from our collection and a dice. For the rest of the spinner we used a paper clip and a small skewer.

To use the spinner, Big Brother put the paper clip onto the paper and put the skewer through the clip. He then flicked the clip with is finger, and wherever it landed was what he needed to do. If he landed on "take" he took gold from the pot and put it into his chest. If he landed on give he took gold out of his chest and put it back into the pot. It took him a few minutes to be able to use the spinner without something falling. 

To figure out how many to take or give he rolled the dice and used the number shown. This meant he was practicing counting the dots or recognizing the pattern, and also counting the marbles.While doing so he was working on developing "one to one correspondence" which means understanding a number equals a set amount of things. (Example, 5 apples = 5). Very important in developing early math skills. 

There was not really a set end to the game, it was more of an exploration but he liked thinking of it as a game. If you had two children you could have each child have a chest and end the game when one person had ten marbles. Two people would also make the spinner work a little easier. 

Big Brother played until he tired of the game, but came back to it another day. 

Arrghh, what games have you created or seen for the light table?