MongoMonopoly Progress

The VBS prop I mentioned in this post is coming along nicely. It has to be large enough to be seen up on a stage in front of a few hundred kids. So hence the name, MongoMonopoly!

Here it is with the original board for comparison. The boot, up near jail and meant to be the “shoe” token, is one of Sophie’s, covered in foil. And the “thimble” is a sippy cup, also covered in foil.

I made the dice yesterday out of white and black felt covering 5” foam cubes. They’re so fun to throw! I think when this is over, I’ll store them near our games so we can sometimes use them instead of their tinier cousins.

For the property names, I brainstormed all sorts of ways to add them, and finally decided on what I thought was the easiest. But after getting about six names into it, I realized even my “easiest” method (which was still quite time-consuming) wasn’t worth the intended end result. Kids would know it was a Monopoly board even without the names, so I painted over the few I’d done already and was proud of myself for choosing an even easier way to add the words, by not adding them! Even though it went against every perfectionistic bone in my body. : )

Some things I still want to finish up before it’s needed on Wednesday:

• making some houses and hotels (Cathe Holden’s Little Paper Houses—so cute!!!—will give me a great starting point for making foldable templates)

• adding the center logo and card stack outlines (the cards are about the size of a piece of paper, so I’ll maybe stick a few yellow and orange sheets of copy paper in the appropriate spot)
• figuring out a display system (That’s what all the piles of scrap wood in my garage are for, honey! See, Ken, I need them!)
• finishing the border, probably with paint
• oh, and making a few more tokens if I can think of easy, quick ways to accomplish that… (instead of the silver painted papier mache sculptures I’d originally dreamed of making when I said Yes to the project in March! Ha!)

I’ve got the thimble and boot done. I ask around and see if I can borrow a Pinewood Derby or Awana Grand Prix car. The iron shouldn’t be too hard to make quick out of cardboard. Not sure about the rest. Any ideas?

Hmm, we do have a My Little Pony in that jumping position. Well, more like “prancing” actually, but close enough, right?