Go online and try to find a chess or checkers game, featuring cartoon characters. You mind find some checkers that do, but likely not chess pieces, and anything you do find, will have a designer price tag. You can give a child a really nice chess or checkers game, made for a few bucks, and it will look like you shopped at an expensive, high-end store. It’s a lot of fun to make the unusual chess or checker pieces from things you can find at a dollar-theme store, and other common items.
If you’re making checkers you’ll need flat pieces, with images of your child’s favorite cartoon characters. You can purchase ordinary checkers and easily give them a different look. Go online and find pictures of Disney princesses, Spongebob and one of his friends, Scooby Doo and Shaggy, or other combinations. Print out circular disks and cut them out of paper. If you want to make them a little sturdier you can glue or tape them to cardboard disks.
Turn all the checkers on one side so that they all have the same side facing upwards. Glue one image on all of the reds, and a slightly different image on all of the blacks. Turn all of the checkers over, and put a different picture on all of the reds, and a slightly altered one on all of the blacks.
The game will work best if you choose one image, and use it on all of the red checkers, then alter the colors on the image – or give it a different background – so that you have only a slightly different look for the black checkers.
It’s even more fun to make cartoon character chess pieces. You can often find little plastic characters – ones that stand on their own – at a dollar-theme store. Made to sit on a shelf, the characters are small and cheap. You can sometimes find bags containing several, for just a buck. Even characters that don’t stand on their own can be used. Glue them onto checkers or similar disks to use them.
Purchase four identical pieces, for each of the knights, bishops, and other pieces, but only two kings and queens. Purchase slightly smaller people to use as pawns. Use markers to change the looks slightly so that each person can tell which is his or hers. For example, you can color shoes a different shade than the other person’s character, or even draw bracelets on their wrists. You could even do something like glue a little felt disk on certain heads, to give them hats. Make enough distinguishing accents so that each player can readily spot his pieces.
The king should be a little larger than the other pieces, the queen should be the next in size, and the rest of the back row pieces should be slightly smaller than her. The pawns, even smaller. But you could also have a theme, like Scooby Doo, where Freddy is the king, Daphne is the queen, and Scooby is the pawn. After you’ve chosen the pieces, and altered some, your kids are ready to play.