A lot of great products in the market offer the first 3 features, such as Hangman Flip-to-Win Wooden Travel Game by Melissa & Doug, Imaginetics Magnetic Hangman Travel Games, GO Magnetic Hangman Travel Game, Magnetic Game Tin: Hangman, but only a home-made product would satisfy the 4th crucial requirement of the lowest cost possible.
I reused the erasable memo board sent by 3 Amigos to advertise their restaurant for this purpose. That its size is only as big as a notebook sheet is perfect for a travel game. The board is heavier and more sturdy than a normal sheet of paper, thus no worry for creases, etc. You can try any erasable memo/fridge board available around.
The erasable memo board I got also has the marker attached to it so it made my project easier. However, you can be creative with attaching a dry-erase marker to the board by using adhesive pad, a flexible string, a chain, etc. If your marker's end tip has the eraser already, it would be a plus. If not, you can stick small piece of soft cloth (such as the kind of cloth for cleaning glasses) or sponge to the back of the board by a paperclip. Do not forget to toss in your bag a pocket-sized pack of facial tissues and a small bottle of hand sanitizer solution. It not only serves to sanitize the little hands quickly but also helps to dampen the cloth or sponge to clean the marks left by the dry-erase marker as effectively as a whiteboard marker eraser.
Some sheets of Post-it could be glued to the back of the board so that your kids may scribble his words of the game, keep track of the game's scores, etc.
On the front of the whiteboard, to the left, use the permanent marker with a different colour to the dry-erase marker to draw the gallows where the hangman will be. To the right edge of the board, write all 26 letters of the alphabet in upper case in rows of 3 or 4 letters each with enough space between them so that your kid can use the dry-erase marker to circle any letter called in by the guesser. At the end of the white board, below the gallows and the ABCs, draw in permanent ink a row of dashes where the letters of the word would be written down in their appropriate places (usually 10 dashes in kids' game).
To play the game, the person who sets the word must announce in advance how many letters there are in his word, e.g. 6 letters so only the first number of dashes equal to the number of letters in the word (6 in this example) would be used in the game. His opponent (the guesser) then tries to guess the word by guessing letters. Once a letter is guessed whether correctly or not, the wordsetter will circle that letter by the dry-erase marker to show that it has been guessed.
If the guessed letter is included indeed in the word, the wordsetter would fill in the corresponding dash(es) with the letter. If the suggested letter does not occur in the word, the wordsetter draws one element of the hangman diagram as a tally mark, starting with a head. The amount of parts of the man can vary, affecting the number of chances of guessing. Usually the player guessing the word gets 6 chances (traditionally the head, then the torso, then the arms & legs one by one). Many players include a face on the head, either all at once or one feature at a time.
The game is over when either the guessing player guesses the whole word correctly or the wordsetter completes the diagram of a hanging man; whichever is earlier. In the first case, the guessing player wins the game.
This Hangman game can be used to play in both English and French and is absolutely a great game for reinforcing and improving kids' vocabulary.
And do not forget to check out a very neat flash Hangman online game for English-as-a-second-language learners at www.manythings.org/hmf/.
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