Snakes and ladders printables
Snakes and ladders printables with numbers
These first snakes and ladders board games all contain numbers. They are great for children to learn counting, in this case, 1 to 50, or 1 to 100. They’re also perfect for anyone who wants to play the most traditional version of the game.
Note that they differ in that on some you must descend if you land on the snake’s head, or go down if you land on a snake’s tail.
Blank snakes and ladders printables
These blank snakes and ladders templates are very useful in that they are versatile and can be used to supplement just about any class you teach. Here are some ideas on how you can use them.
- For children learning numbers, you can get them to number each of the tiles on the board game. This will also help young learners with their writing ability.
- Instead of numbers ask your students to fill in each tile with a word. You can let them choose from whatever subject it is they are currently studying or provide a word list or textbook chapter for them. For more advanced classes get your students to make sentences using the words or practice a particular grammar structure.
- Ask your students to draw pictures on the tiles of the snakes and ladders printables. If for example, they are learning food they can draw different kinds of fruit, vegetables, and any other food vocabulary that they are studying. When they play the board games they should say aloud the words (pictures) that they land on.
How to play snakes and ladders
This is a very simple board game that even young primary school students can play.
What you will need –
- A copy of one of the snakes and ladders board games. Note that these are designed to be printed on A$ paper or card.
- dice
- A token for each player to move across the board. This can be just about anything, a coin, a piece of paper with the player’s name on it, a pen lid, a pencil sharpener……use whatever you like!
How to play –
- All players must start at the first square with the aim of reaching the final square to be the winner.
- Decide on a player order. Rolling the dice to see who gets the highest number is an easy way to do this. Usually, the players should take turns in a clockwise direction.
- In turns, players roll the dice and move their tokens along the board correspondingly. If say a player rolls a 5, then they should move their token 5 tiles forward.
- If a player lands on the bottom of a ladder once they have finished moving then they move up the ladder. This brings them closer to the finishing point. If somebody lands on the middle of a ladder they do not move up at all.
- If a player lands on the top of a snake (head or tail) then they must move down, backward towards the starting point. Similarly landing on the middle of a snake means you do not descend
- You can make some variations such as players receiving an extra turn if they roll a six. Another common rule is that players must roll the exact number to land on the finish tile to win.
