Teletherapy Materials: Making Board Games in Power Point

This process is for making your own materials for personal use ONLY—not for making materials to sell! Click below for a FREEBIE game board with movable pieces!

1.      Open Power Point.

2.      Delete text boxes that automatically come up on a new slide.

3.      Click on Design tab at the top. Go all the way to the right and select Slide Size.

4.      Chose Standard Size for more of a square look or Widescreen for a more elongated look.

5.      Next, choose Format Background.

6.      To add some interest, I use backgrounds from Pexels or Pixabay. Choose Picture or texture fill then select Insert from Picture Source. I like to slide the transparency bar over to make the background a little more transparent.

7.      Then insert shapes to form your game path. Go to the Insert tab at the top and find shapes. Select the shape you like, such as a rectangle. Change the color to coordinate or stand out from your background. Select shape outline to add an outline. You can also choose the color and thickness of the outline. Once you have a shape you like, copy and paste several times and create a path from Start to Finish.

8.      If you want to align your path shapes more, use the align tools to get a look you like. To center your new path on your background, select all of the shapes, then move them together as a group.

9.      Write directions or words in the boxes. For example, you can write START, END, AHEAD 1, BACK 1, or specific words or directions in your pathway boxes. Once you create a path you like, you can use it over and over with different backgrounds and customize it with different target words or sentences. Another trick is to select the Shape, Go to Shape Fill, then select picture. You can add a picture from your own files or go to the image search and grab an image online. If you choose to add online images, DO NOT TRY TO SELL YOUR GAMEBOARD. THIS WOULD BE A COPY WRITE VIOLATION. If you are planning on making products to sell, that is a whole different ballgame!

10.  Once you have your power point slide the way you like it, save it and label it something like Power Point Game Slides. That way, whenever you need to make a new game, you have a template.

11.  Next, save it again as a PDF. I prefer to save my PDF’s in Adobe Acrobat Reader. This allows me to add stampsto my game board as movable game pieces.

FREEBIE PDF GAMEBOARD