Easy Yardzee Yard Dice Game Tutorial + Printable Scorecard and Rules

Learn how make your own DIY wooden yard dice for games, plus free printable Yardzee rules and game instructions for a summer full of backyard parties and memories! Bonus: Print our easy Yardzee scorecard and customized bucket label, too.

For more outdoor games, you can make your own jumbo wood dominoes, build and paint a cornhole board set (ours are Star Wars!), plus try these 35 DIY Backyard Games.

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Download the *FREE* printable Yardzee rules and dice template

DIY Yardzee Wooden Yard Dice

It is summer time and BRING IT ON already!  Are you guys ready to play some Yardzee?  I am so ready!  Ready for family game time outside, neighborhood barbecues, NO school and our amazing flood irrigation parties – seriously the best perk about this old house!!!

It is funny how much joy there is in a new season and I feel like Olaf as I dream of summer and all things hot and fun!  Especially now while my kids are in school and I am craving some freedom from busy schedules and being closed up inside the house.  Let’s just play outside all day and enjoy the weather.

Easy summer game projects are definitely a favorite here, and we know you readers love them too! So we thought we would add this REALLY fun DIY game to your summer plans. This is YARDZEE — a.k.a yard yahtzee.

In this post, we’ll show you how to make wood yard dice (cheap and easy!), plus explain how how to play and all the Yardzee rules for scoring.

Get the FREE printable Yardzee rules and printable dice template here, and get the printable Yardzee scoring sheet and custom bucket labels here.

How to Make Your Own Wood Dice for a Yardzee Game

It’s cheap and easy to make your own DIY giant yard dice to use for dice games like Yardzee or Farkle. You need only about 2 feet of 4×4 to make the 5 dice needed, so this is a great scrap project – or a full 8-foot 4×4 post will make 5 sets of 5 dice (or 4 sets of 6 dice, so you have an extra to play Farkle). Make a set for yourself, and a few for friends and neighbors as Christmas gifts or housewarming presents.

Watch the video here on Youtube, or follow the tutorial below.

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Supplies

• 1 – 5 gallon bucket with a lid for storing (we bought ours at Walmart)
• Approximately 20″ of 4×4 wood (actually 3.5″ square)
• Craft paint, sharpie or wood burning tool
• Sanding block and sanding paper (or electric sander)
• Stain and/or wood sealer (optional)
• Printer for scorecard and label (we love our Canon PIXMA MG 7720 Printer)
• Home laminator machine and lamination pouches
• Yardzee printables for score cards, rules, customizable bucket label (in 6 different colors!), and dice stencil
  • You can also purchase a pad of Yahtzee score cards on Amazon if you prefer single-use scorecards over a laminated re-usable scoring sheet.

 

Note: Justin is a perfectionist and loves using tools for projects, so he used our drill press to emboss the pips (dice dots). You do NOT have to do that – you can draw them on with a sharpie, or paint them with acrylic paint, or even use a woodburning tool to mark the dots.

Step-by-Step DIY Wooden Yard Dice

Step 1: Cut the Dice Cubes

Set up a stop on your miter saw at 3 1/2″.  This is just a fancy way of saying, clamp a scrap board to the fence. By creating a stop you can guarantee that each dice is exactly the same size, and it saves a TON of measuring and time.

Simply push the 4×4 until it hits the stop, then carefully cut according to the directions on your machine to make 5 wood cubes (or 6 if you’d like to play Farkle or other games).

Step 2: Sand

When the yard dice blocks are all cut, it is time to knock down the sharp edges of the new cuts.  You can use a hand sanding block with sandpaper, orbital sander, or whatever kind of sander you have available.

The goal is to soften all the corners to match the pre-cut, filleted (or rounded) edges of the 4×4.  This will also be a helpful safety precaution since you don’t want those sharp corners to land on any toes when you are playing Yardzee, so don’t skip this step.

Step 3: Print the Template & Transfer to Blocks

Once the blocks are sanded smooth, print the free dice stencil template. You can use the template as a general reference, or you can be a perfectionist and use it to mark the exact layout. Opposite sides of the die add up to 7.

There are several ways you can transfer the template to the blocks:

• Use carbon transfer paper between the template and the block to trace the shape on the blocks.
• Make your own transfer paper: Rub a soft lead pencil or chalk on the back of each template dot, then place that side down on the block and trace the circles with a fine point pen or other sharp object.
• Use a ball point pen to trace the outline of the shape and indent the soft pine.
• Use an awl or other sharp point to locate the center of the dot, then use a drill press or forstner bit to drill out the hole. (This is what we did.)

Step 4: Mark the Pips (Dots)

Color in the number dots.  There are several options.

• Use a sharpie or acrylic paint to fill in the dots.
• Use a wood burning tool to fill in the dots.
• Use a drill press set at about an 1/8th inch depth.  Drill the holes and then use black acrylic paint fill in the holes.
  • No drill press? You could also use a Forstner bit like Jamison used here.

Step 5: Stain and Seal the Wood Dice (optional)

Stain and seal with polyurethane or oil if desired.  We skipped this step because I liked the light color of the wood, and sealing will always darken the wood.

Printable Yardzee Scorecard and Custom Bucket Label

Print out the Yardzee bucket label of your choice – you have 6 colors to choose from!

You can leave the name section blank like we did, or customize the PDF by typing in the family name. Great for neighborhood BBQs or an easy gift idea!

Note: Some readers have reported trouble with the embedded font to customize the labels. If you’re having the same trouble, be sure to open the PDF outside of your web browser, on a computer (not a mobile device) using Adobe Reader.

We used our Canon PIXMA MG7720 on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.  We decided to laminate ours so that it could stand up to heavy use and possible water.  Tape it to your bucket.

How to attach the printable Yardzee label to the yard dice bucket — 3 options

1. Print the label on thick paper or cardstock, then laminate the sheet and tape it to the bucket using packing tape. (We love our home laminator!)
2. Print the label directly onto a waterproof full-page label like this and attach to the bucket.
3. Print the label on thick paper or cardstock, then slide into a full page shipping label pouch and attach to the bucket.

Print out the Yardzee score card sheet.  We laminated ours and threw in several dry erase markers so that we would always have a score card available – wet erase markers would work well, too.  You can also buy a yahtzee score card sheet pad on Amazon.

Throw the dice, and score sheets in the bucket and get ready to Yardzee your summer nights away!

Yardzee Rules: How to Play

Now that you’ve got your DIY yard dice made, you’re ready to play! Get the one-page free printable version of these Yardzee rules here.

PLAY Yardzee with 2-6 players

Object of Yardzee

Earn the highest score after 13 rounds of rolling 5 dice. In each round, you score in one of the 13 scoring categories and you must score each category throughout the game – unless you roll multiple Yardzee scores (5 of a kind). Each category has its own scoring rules, shown on the scorecard. 

Game Play

Choose the Rolling Order

You can roll from youngest to oldest (our family preference) or by having each player roll all 5 dice – highest score goes first, then the next highest is second, and so on. 

Set Up The Scorecard

Write names on the scorecard in playing order. Each player’s score in each category will be recorded in the column below their name. 

Play Each Turn

On each player’s turn they….

1. ROLL. Place all 5 dice in the bucket and throw them.
2. RE-ROLL. The player can re-roll any of the dice up to 3 times to improve their score (up to 3 rolls total). The player can choose to score at any time. 
3. SCORE. After rolling, the player chooses which category to score their dice. (Score details are shown on the printable scorecard page.) The score is market in the corresponding upper category or lower category box.

Remember, each category can only be used once! The exception to this is the Yardzee (5 of a kind) which can be scored multiple times if the player rolls it and chooses to score it as a Yardzee instead of an upper section category to gain a potential bonus there.

Players can also choose to score their roll at any time, even if the resulting score is 0 (called dump scores).

PLAY THEN CONTINUES with the next player, until all players have had 13 turns scored.  

Final Scoring

After 13 rounds of play, total each player’s score from the upper section (including bonus points, if earned) and the lower section (including Yardzee bonuses, if earned) then add the upper section total and lower section total for the final score for that player. (Boxes for these totals are included on the scorecard.) The player with the highest overall score is the winner!  

Yardzee Scoring Card Rules

The yardzee scoring card is divided into an upper and lower section, just like a regular yahtzee scoring pad for the tabletop game. In the course of the game, each player can only score *once* in each category of each section, so the strategy is to choose wisely which rolls you score in which category.

The object of the game is to have the highest score after 13 rolls. Points are marked on the score table after each player’s roll concludes.

Upper Section Scoring

The upper section scores by the amount of same-number dice rolled: aces (ones), twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes. The score is the total of the specified die face showing after a maximum of 3 rolls.

A further bonus of 35 points can be earned if all upper section scores total 63 or higher.

Lower Section Scoring

The lower section scores by specific combinations of dice numbers to fit the category requirements. The categories are named similar to poker hands and each scored differently as a sum or set amount:

• 3 of a kind – score by adding the total of all 3 matching dice
• 4 of a kind – score by adding the total of all 4 matching dice
• Full House category (3 of one number and 2 of another) – score 25
• Small Straight (sequence of 4, such as 1-2-3-4) – score 30
• Large Straight / Long Straight (sequence of 5, such as 2-3-4-5-6) – score 40
• YARDZEE category (5 of a kind) – score 50
• Chance category (any combination) – score by adding the total of all 5 dice

A bonus of 100 points can be earned for additional Yardzees (5 of a kind) after the first Yardzee is scored in the Yardzee box. Mark each bonus with a check on the scorecard, then total at the end of the game.

Game End Scoring

At the end of a game, the upper section total and the lower section total are each marked in the box indicated. The total of upper scores and lower scores are then combined, and the resulting score is the player’s final score. Highest score wins!

Thank you to Canon for partnering with me on this super fun Yardzee printable and game.

Be sure to check out more fun summer yard games here, too!

• How to Make Your Own Scrap Wood Giant Dominoes Game
• DIY Cornhole Game Woodworking Plans
• 35 more DIY giant backyard games
• 25 backyard games to buy today and play all summer

Published 05.16.16 // Last updated 06.30.2024