Making your own games can often be as much fun as playing the latest blockbusters from Nintendo or Microsoft. But how can you bring this creative spirit to the library? Thankfully, Karen Jensen has written a thorough exploration of “DIY Games” for School Library Journal’s Teen Librarian Toolbox:

Our teens have asked for board games to play while waiting, but a large number of the games they have requested are expensive and they often don’t accommodate a lot of players, which would mean we would be spending a couple hundred dollars on board games. I know that lots of public libraries have board games and use them in their programming, but this hasn’t been something that our administration has wanted to invest in because of the cost and issues of lost pieces, etc. Plus, we are currently investing a lot of money into our Teen MakerSpace.

But we have an excellent Teen MakerSpace so I thought, let’s address this teen request and get teens involved in making. My grand idea: we could combine the two and help teens create their own games to play. Thus, we started working with teens on DIY Games.

Jensen’s post is perfect if you’ve ever wanted to learn more about basic coding with Scratch and Bloxels, as well as a few how-to ideas for making your own tabletop games.