Life Size Candy Land

At the end of last year as I was scrolling through Pinterest to get programming ideas for the Winter I had a temporary bought of insanity that led me to believe that conducting a Life Size Candy Land game at the library for Valentine's Day would be a good idea. As it would turn out, while at times seeming a daunting and indeed insane undertaking, in five years of library service, Life Size Candy Land is the program that I am most proud to have put together.

Although it will require a good deal of planning and preperation, Life Size Candy Land is not a program you should feel intimidated to have at your library. If you already have a decent store of basic arts and crafts supplies and you begin your planning early, lack of funds and short staffing do not need to be barriers to this program. I had to get creative with the supplies we had on hand, but in the end Life Size Candy Land, which entertained 70 children and parents, cost a total of just $63.

The first step to Candy Land was coming up with a game plan for how to bring each of the "Lands" to life. I opted to use an updated version of Candy Land which differed from the board I remembered from childhood, as we had a copy on hand at the branch and I figured it would be the game the children would be familiar with. Below I will detail the steps I used to create the props for Candy Land. After scouring the internet for pictures of other Life Size Candy Land games created by libraries and for birthday parties, I compiled a list of the supplies that would be absolutely necessary to purchase as we did not have them on hand. Ultimately, the main supply needed ended up being clear cellophane wrap to create the large lollypops and peppermints. In the month that followed, almost all my "project hours" ended up being consumed by creating these props.

Cupcake Commons: The large cupcakes were created using containers from the dollar store as a base. They were then stuffed with spare newspaper and covered in colored tissue paper and decorated with pom poms to create the look of icing and sprinkles.

Peppermint Pass: There were two components that went into creating the Pepperming Pass. One was simply a strand of borrowed light up candy cane Christmas decorations (I recommended using some lights where possible as it really brings the board to life), the other was giant peppermint candies I constructed. The candies were easy to make as they were just two white paper plates glued together, with red paint creating the effect of a peppermint candy. They were then wrapped in cellophane to create the look of candy wrappers.

Ice Cream Slopes: This "land" had to be created the day of as I did not have a place to store the structure in advance. The "slopes" are simply card board boxes covered with white table cloths to create the effect of snow and covered in pictures of ice cream cones. The large ice cream cones were an idea from Pinterest and are balloons with brown paper wrapped around the base to form a cone. However, it was more difficult to get the balloon to stick to the paper than I anticipated.

Gummy Pass: I had to get a little creative with this one as putting together large gumdrops was going to prove too costly. Instead, a small inflatable kiddie pool that we have pressed into service for many events was filled with small plastic balls and balloons that served as "gumballs." The children then needed to get throught the pool without popping any "gumballs".

Licorice Lagoon: It took me the most amount of time to settle on my approach to making giant swirls of licorice and I toyed around with several ideas including one that would have involved pool noodles. Ultimately, I opted to paint giant red or purple circles on a large roll of white paper. The circles were then cut out (7 total). To create the look of rolled candy I glued yarn in a swirling pattern on each circle. Red yarn on the red circles and black yarn on the purple circles. To finish the "licorice" off I coated each piece with a clear varnish that when dried gave them the shiny effect of candy.

Lollypop Woods: This ended up being my favorite section of Candy Land once it was done. The large lollypops were constructed in a similar fashion as the peppermints. Two paper plates were glued together and then painted. I then attached sticks wrapped in white tape to the bottom of the plates and wrapped the "lollypops" in cellophane. To make it look like "woods" we placed the lollypops in the library's artifical Christmas trees which we had found in the back of a storage closet.

Gingerbread House & Ice Palace: These two structures were both constructed in a similar way. It involved breaking down book boxes to get large flat pieces of card board. I then taped the cardboard together and used a box cutter to cut down the card board into a basic house shape. The gingerbread house then had to be wrapped in brown butcher paper and the Ice Palace in white paper from a large roll. Once that was done each house had to be decorated with paint and glitter. These ended up being some of the more difficult pieces to put together. Since we didn't have any large pieces of cardboard piecing the boxes together and covering it in paper was time consuming but in the end I was really pleased with how they turned out, and the kids were very excited when one of our librarians told them that Elsa might have built the Ice Palace!

Chocolate Mountain: By far the easiest section to make. Just wrap cardboard boxes in paper and paint brown to make chocolare pieces.

Candy Castle: We really lucked out on this one. The previous year all the libraries in our area received card board castle displays from the Children's Services Council as part of a literacy campaign. We had saved ours figuring it could be incorporated into a program. Thus, Candy Castle was simply the repurposed cardboard castle decorated with pictures of candy.

When it comes to the day of the program do not underestimate the amount of time set up will take. It took two Youth Services staff members plus four of the library's student shelvers the better part of the morning to tape down the paper for the board and set up all the props in the library's meeting room. For the path around Candy Land I copied the spaces on the board exactly using large pieces of construction paper. We also laid down the squares of paper in the same shape as the board.

Since there was such high interest in the program it was clear that it would not be practical for only four kids to play at a time, like in the board game. Instead 16 kids played at a time, four each on a red team, blue team, yellow team and green team. The teams they were on were distinguished by the hats pictured below. Once we had 16 kids we began to play. As the next 16 arrived a staff member got them checked in for the next round of play and we had coloring sheets for them while they waited to play. We followed the exact same rules as the board game with one staff member on a microphone at the front of the meeting room pulling the cards and telling each team where to move. There were two of us on the board making sure the kids knew where to go and moved in the correct direction. We had kids ranging in age from 3 to 10 and the 5 and unders needed a little help! The winning team each round got the choose a dollar store trinket for a prize and there was candy for all.

Life Size Candy Land was very successful in the end and we have stored all the items made for it and plan on bringing it out again during the summer. Each child was able to play 2 or even 3 times as games of Candy Land do not last long and the parents enjoyed the many great photo opportunites of their kids playing. Truly a program that got the whole family involved.