Home-Made Learning Games: King's Ransom

I was in a creative mood the other day and drew up this game to help Lily learn her addition facts for 9's; it could easily be modified for any math facts. If you read my post about visiting Durnstein Castle in Austria, you can guess where the inspiration came from--King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England was held captive there until the English found out where he was and eventually ransomed him. The goal of this game was to ransom the king held captive in the castle.
I wrote the addition problems for 9's around the edges of the board (ours happened to be shield-shaped, left over from another project, but any poster board would work well). I chose an amount for the ransom, in this case 50 cents (I had just picked up a roll of nickels at the bank and thought I would throw in some money practice by using those to collect the ransom). I made up cards with the numbers 9-18, and every player started with 5. The game is played by rolling a die and moving your playing piece to the appropriate problem square. If you have a number card with the answer to that question, you get to trade it in for a nickel and roll again. If you don't have the right answer card, you draw a card from the draw pile; if that card matches you can play it and go on, if not your turn ends. My children enjoyed the game but were getting anxious to move on to something else before anyone had acquired the requisite 10 nickels to ransom the king, so Lily and Luke pooled their funds and freed the king that way. I think next time we play I might spice things up a bit by throwing in random squares requiring the player who lands on them to do something other than answering a math problem--say, twenty jumping jacks (anything active is good!) in order to earn their coin. And maybe each square could earn a different coin--that way they would get more money practice! The ransom amount too could vary...