Crafty Noughts + Crosses

Noughts and crosses is a very simple game that can be played almost anywhere, the simplicity of the game is one of the things we love about it.

We wanted to build on this as an activity where children get to create their own players. A fun activity to keep children focused, creative and busy.

We created this activity two ways, one with pebbles found in the garden and little wooden blocks cut from a spare piece of wood found in the shed.

The little wooden blocks require a grown-up to cut them to size, but it was a very quick process. It took about 15-20mins to hand cut and lightly hand sand the 10 little squares all ready to be painted. See bottom of the post for details on the wooden blocks

You can scale the complexity of this activity based on the child's age. If they're little simply paint the stones a colour. The older the child the more creative they may want to be, adding their own characters or superpower symbols.


Things you'll need

Pebbles x 10 split into two piles of 5
Or 10 wooden blocks split into two piles of 5

Paint
Paint brushes
Tape (optional)
Chalk for the board grid

Step 1

Decide what the team identifier will be. Maybe it's a colour, symbol, initial, pattern, faces, flower or maybe all the players pieces are part of a family E.g. animals.

Step 2

Take 5 pebbles/wooden blocks 

Step 3

Begin to paint (Note for the wooden blocks we quickly taped the sides to keep the edges nice and clean and free of painted finger marks.)

Step 4

You may need to paint the pieces in stages. Base colour first and then adding the details once this has dried. Once all the players pieces are complete, leave to dry.

Step 5

Once all the players pieces are dry you can draw your board and begin to play!

Wooden blocks

To create our little wooden blocks we used a piece of wood measuring W:45mm x D:15mm and cut these square, but you can use any size wood you feel is appropriate.

The pieces were cut with a hand saw and then lightly sanded with a 180 grit sand paper to smooth any rough edges for little hands.

To get a clean edge, simple apply masking tape around the edge of the block.