Asian New Year: How To Make A Korean Yut Nori Game

I discovered kid friendly instructions on how to make a Korean Yut Nori game with kids at TLC Family. To make it easier for you I designed a fun printable game board to use for your Asian New Year celebrations. The kids just need to decorate the game board, 4 popsicle sticks and their game pieces.



Yut Nori is traditionally played during The Korean New Years. It is a simple, fun and quick game to play. If your little one can count to 5 they can play. My 5 year old had so much fun decorating her game pieces, popsicle sticks and game board. She was very proud to play HER game.

We are going to make Yut Nori kits for Lu's Kindergarten class. I am volunteering to help them celebrate the New Year. We will show them how to play and then how to make their own game. I think they will really like it!

I created a free Year of the Rabbit Yut Nori game board. You can print your own below. 

yutnorikoreangame

I also included the rabbit ying yang for coloring if you would like to print it. The ying yang is an ode to the ying yang on the Korean flag.

rabbityingyang

Instructions for making your own Yut Nori Game Board and pieces:

Game Board: Print out template on card stock. Children can decorate game board with round stickers and markers. Mark your starting point by a unique sticker or color.

Game Pieces: In place of a dice, you use sticks. Traditionally the sticks are rounded with one flat side. For this version children will use popsicle sticks.

Have child decorate 4 popsicle sticks - only on one side - any way you like. Use markers, paint or stickers. It is important to keep one side blank. If you would like, you can make a color represent the blank side and make the other side patterned. The player tosses the sticks on the table during their turn. Count how many decorated sides are facing up. That is the number of spaces the player moves. Bonus: If all sticks turn up blank you get to move 5 places.

If you land on someone else's spot you have to go back to start. The lines in the corner are shortcuts. If you land on those spots you get to slide across to the corresponding dot.

You can use anything as your game piece, a button, pebble, spool...

For Lu's class, I bought these little wooden pieces for them to decorate and personalize for their own game pieces.

I hope you try this game at home!

Happy New Year!