I was talking to one of R’s former pre-school teachers the other day, and she mentioned a board game she used to play with her daughter and husband called Pretty Pretty Princess. It involved moving pieces around the board (ala Candy Land) and collecting real jewelry that you get to wear. You win when you put on the tiara and shout out “I’m a Pretty Pretty Princess!” My first thought was that both of my girls would love this game and I should look for it on Amazon as soon as possible.¹ My second thought was that we already owned most of the parts and it would be even more fun to make the game ourselves.

We started by rolling out a big piece of paper and taping it to the dining room table. I drew a winding track and divided it into spaces. The girls went to town with their markers and drew bracelets, necklaces, rings, and earrings all over the board while I tracked down some dice (not hard) and our tiaras. We selected our game pieces from our bag of Schleich animals and My Little Ponies, grabbed our kids’ jewelry box, and started playing.

Rolling the dice and moving her piece the right number of spaces were challenges for B (not quite three years old), but picking jewelry out of the box made it all worthwhile. R enjoyed the game even though the pace was a little bit slow. We’ll play this version a few more times, but I’m already looking forward to making it more complicated by adding forks in the road, special squares, and some weird rules.

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