Game Night - DC-opoly Style

Last year our boys were obsessed with playing Monopoly.  They played everyday, and they are the type of kids who don't lose interest after thirty minutes.

At the same time, they started making up their own pretend versions of Monopoly.  They'd type up the names of the properties they'd have for their own Monopoly game.  They'd change the selling prices, the rent prices, the mortgage prices, the prices for houses and hotels.  We'd have about thirty sheets of paper around the house, printed out with all these pretend Monopoly lists.  They were obsessed. 

The plans for Christopher's Florida Monopoly

Then one day I got the brilliant idea to look on Amazon to see if they had a Monopoly making kit.  They did.  It was $30.  Thirty dollars a kit times three boys was looking at almost a hundred dollars.  Seeing how we were already on our second Monopoly game because things like that just don't last long when they get played with everyday in our house, I was not excited about spending a hundred dollars on these Monopoly kits that probably wouldn't last all that long anyways.

In steps my super hubby with his usual good idea. 

Just buy a regular Monopoly game for $10 at Walmart, get some sticky computer paper (I'm sure that's the technical name), design Monopoly squares on the computer, print them out, stick them to the Monopoly board, and viola!  The kids made their own Monopoly games (well Chris and I did help quite a bit, but they were each designed by the kids.  And it took awhile.) 

Christopher designed a Florida Monopoly game with properties like Lake Okeechobee, The University of Florida, and Disney World. 

Gabriel designed an Oceanopoly game with property names like Baluga Whale, Submarine, and Octopus.

And Matthew designed a DC Monopoly game (I think we made these shortly after our vacation to Washington, DC in April 2009). 

And that is what we played during game night this week.

We used the original money and game pieces, but in addition to making new property cards, we came up with new 'Community Chest' and 'Chance' cards, renamed "House" and "Senate" in Matthew's Washington, DC version.

 It was really fun to do with the kids because they were the brains behind the idea and they were so excited about it.  And somehow they turned out really nice looking.