15+ Household Items to use in Place of Board Game Pieces

While we haven't lost any of our game pieces, I know a lot of people do and then end up throwing the entire game away or just never play it. We ended up using Barbie shoes as our pieces the other day and it inspired me to make a list of things that could be used in place of game pieces.

1. Barbie shoes
2. Barbie or other pretend food (we used our cakes from Strawberry Shortcake's baking set another time)
3. Little People if the game spaces are big enough (or other characters from toy sets, Octonauts, Sofia's family, etc)
4. Coins, this can also be good for discussing the differences between the coins when each member of the family has a different one
5. Polly Pocket clothes
6. Pieces of candy
7. Legos
8. Pieces from other games
9. Bits of broken crayon
10. Different colored paper clips
11. Calico Critters babies
12. Dyed uncooked pasta in different colors
13. Water bottle caps in different colors or with symbols drawn on them
14. Little pieces of paper with stickers stuck to them
15. Old marker caps
16. Beads
17. Different colored plastic straws cut down to size

for a list of my favorite board games for preschoolers, refer to this previous post.