Boardgames on the SmartBoard

One way I am fortunate as an SLP is the fact that I have a SmartBoard in my room.  Interactive Whiteboards are a great tool to read on-line books, make worksheets interactive, and I also like to use mine for many of the boardgames I have purchased at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Here is an example of the Superhero board game from Jenn Alcorn's TPT packet "SuperHero Articulation":

Since our school poster maker does not print in color, and I didn't want just an 81/2 X 11 version that would be too small for everyone in my group to see, I copied the picture from the product by the process I illustrate below into my SmartBoard Notebook.  Now the game board is huge, and thanks to the dice that come in my SmartBoard Notebook program, my students can roll the dice on the board (no more loose dice falling off the table or arguments that someone didn't really "roll" the dice).  They also get to move the big playing pieces along the board and it gets us all up and away from the kidney table for a session. 

Here is how you find the dice in the SmartBoard Notebook program-

Click on the gallery icon on the left toolbar, then enter dice in to the search box.

Up pops choices, and you click on Interactive and Multimedia, and then choose the dice you want.  When students play the game on the board, they just tap the dice and it rolls on screen. 

Tons of free board game templates are at TPT, or a Google search can find you lots of other free templates.  Google search can also find you clipart of game pieces you copy and paste into the Notebook program.  When I play my Superhero game next time, I am going to use clipart of Spiderman, Superman, Batman, etc to be the playing pieces.  Here is a cute spring-themed one from Word to the Wise. 

I opened the file after I downloaded it from TPT, found the page the board game is on, and selected current page.  You should see the page you want.

You can click print and choose to have it sent right to SmartBoard Notebook Document Writer, but make sure you have your Notebook program opened or it won't "print" it to the Notebook.

 

I'm going to jazz up this game with some free clipart of insects and let the kids chose whether they want to be a ladybug, bee, or dragonfly as their playing piece while we play this game. One other bit of advice, make sure once you have the image in the Notebook that you lock the image in place by right clicking the image and then choosing lock so the board doesn't move when you play the game.

 

I love the products created by other SLPs, but it does get expensive printing out all of the materials, so anyway I can save something from having to be printed, while also making the product "bigger than life" by putting it on the SmartBoard, is a win-win for me.