Preparing for Christmas--Board Games!

It’s funny because growing up I was never a huge game-lover. We had a great collection of board games that we played often, but it wasn’t ever my favorite thing to do as a kid. Fast forward a couple decades and I am now the poster child for the awesomeness of board games when it comes to kids. Guys, it’s a fantastic way to play WITH your kids without having to pretend to be a transformer or a Paw Patrol character or give voice to a train as it chugs around a track! Whenever my kids say to me “mommy will you play with us?” I now say “yes! Go pick a board game!” They are perfect for long, hot afternoons (or cold, snowy afternoons depending on where you live!) and actually we’ve found them to be a great way to play with Daddy before bed in the evening without getting all wound up as so many daddy-games end up doing to them. Board games teach incredible life-skills—taking turns, following the rules, loosing and winning gracefully. And then as they get better, they start learning some basic strategy skills. In the past couple decades there has been a HUGE influx of games on the market that are NOT boring. No longer do you have to sit through the mind-numbingness of Candy Land 800 times (although I do still think that’s one of the best games for kids to experience first because it is SO simple and still has them deal with a few disappointments and victories when you spin the candy pieces and have to move forward or backwards). We are always happy to receive new games and it’s one of the “toy” type items I’m fine spending money on for the kids because it really is a gift to the whole family and it’s something they will use over and over again for years. The other amazing thing we’ve found after about 6 months of being serious about playing a game almost every day with them is that they will now go play one together while I’m making dinner. They’ll set up Ticket to Ride and sit down and play without fighting or without adult help because they’ve played with us so many times. Anything that gets my kids to be happily entertained without my intervening is GOLD in my house!

So below I’ve given you some of our very favorites for a few different age groups as well as why we love it. I wanted to add that this post was a collaboration with my sister who is the QUEEN of board games—they host a weekly game night for grown ups in their neighborhood and have been playing games with their kids for years. Her girls are 8 and 10 so she had a few games for older kids we haven’t been quite ready for that I included here in case you have an upper elementary kiddo in your life to shop for. Not all kids are ready for all games at the same time. My kids have developed very differently and games my 4 year old can play and understand at this age are not games my oldest might have “gotten” when he was 4. But partly that’s because Aidan wasn’t reading at 4 and Asher is. I’ve found that the ages listed on the box are good estimates, but not hard and fast rules, so hopefully my description of our experience of the game might help you choose a few new ones that might work for your family.

Best Games for the Whole Family No Matter What Age

One of the greatest movements in board game culture these days is there are a HUGE number of games that have everyone working cooperatively to accomplish a goal together. This means no matter how old your kids are they can join in the fun—first by being partners with a grown up and then participating on their own. One of our favorite games in this category (and my sister said it’s her girl’s favorite too) is the Eye Found It series of games put out by Disney. The game board is a HUGE mural of scenes from all Disney movies, and the whole group is working together to move their characters to Cinderella’s castle before the clock strikes 12. Along the way you have “I Spy” challenges to complete where you have 1 minute to find all the bridges or apples or mailboxes or pirates on the game board. Kids as young as 2 and Grandparents as old as 80 can help look for things so this is a fantastic one to break out after a holiday meal when everyone needs something to do together before dessert is served! We love this game and recommend it for any family!

Yahtzee—You may think the math involved in this is too tough for young kids, but play as a team! Kids love to be the dice rollers and will quickly start to figure out “what number do we have the most of? Okay lets try and get more 3’s!” Aidan started learning about multiplication in kindergarten playing this game without us even trying (he just started memorizing that 4 5’s equals 20 etc.)

Jenga—this gets used a LOT in our house, mostly as dominoes for the boys to build with but we love playing the actual game too!

Best Games for Preschoolers That Won’t Make You Poke Your Eye Out

Outfoxed—this was a new one for us this fall and kids as young as 3/4 can play. This is another one where everyone is working together to try and catch the fox who stole a pie. This is an awesome game to start building some simple reasoning skills (ie you find out the culprit does NOT have a hat on, so looking at the suspects who is NOT it?). If the group figures it out before the fox escapes down his fox hole you all win!

Sequence Jr. — the rules are basically the same as grown up Sequence—get 4 of your colored playing chips in a row but this uses animals instead of a deck of playing cards which preschoolers can easily start to understand.

Uno—3 and 4 year olds can start to understand the matching part of this game and will slowly pick up how to use Wild cards as they play with an adult a few times.

Spot It Jr Animals—a great introduction to the game Spot It where kids have to look at 2 different cards and find the things that are the same—this one is awesome because it’s so portable and great for a purse to have on hand while waiting in restaurants! Spot it Jr uses animals instead of shapes/numbers for littler players.

Mouse Trap—Kids absolutely love the contraption component to this game and the game itself actually isn’t that boring for parents. Plus assembling the board takes learning how to follow step by step instructions which paves the way for following lego building instructions.

Best Games for Young Elementary Kids (ages 4-8)

Monopoly Jr—Alright so I actually hate Monopoly. It takes hours and I never fully understand how someone finally wins…maybe because I’ve never actually played a game long enough to get to the end of one. But Monopoly Jr is absolutely my jam! It’s SO much shorter, simpler, and actually kind of fun! Asher is an absolute rock star at this game and beats us all the time. You are only dealing with $1 bills, you are required to buy the property you land on, or pay rent to the owner, and the game is over when someone runs out of money. We play this one probably 3 times a week. At least.

Ticket to Ride Jr.—This is my personal favorite game. Chuck and I used to play the grown up version a ton before kids, but we got our kids the junior version last Christmas and they adore it. It’s the same concept as the adult game—you receive a card with a destination on it (say, from Duluth to Miami) and you have to collect the right colored cards that allow you to build the segments of your train track to get you there. Our boys played this a bunch last winter and by summer they were starting to ask to play the older version they saw in our closet. So we broke it out and they can absolutely do it. I still think I’d start with the junior version if you have preschoolers because the map is much simpler, the cards are bigger to hold onto and there are fewer cities on the map which just makes it easier for them to learn the geography, but anyone 1/2nd grade or older could start on the grown up version.

Catan Jr—We loved playing Settlers of Catan in our pre-kid life, we’d have Settlers parties with groups of friends and got pretty into it. So when we discovered there was a junior version we were so excited to get this for our kids last Christmas. It’s a very similar concept to the grown up version but a much simpler game board. They have to collect resources, build their fortresses and try and settle Catan by trading commodities. The boys played on teams with us a couple times and then started playing on their own pretty quickly. I’d say this would be great for kindergarten and older.

Sequence—same game but the older version. Our boys both like this but the game board is much more overwhelming than the junior version because it’s dealing with whole decks of cards. This is a great game though to teach them the four suits and what the face cards are in a deck of playing cards!

Clue—We actually haven’t played this with our kids yet, but I’ve already bought it so it’s one of the games they’ll be opening on Christmas. I LOVED this game as a kid. They have a junior version but I just went ahead and bought the adult version knowing they’d pick it up pretty quickly if we played with them a few times.

Five Crowns—I actually don’t know anything about this game but when I asked my sister which games she liked for this age group this was one of her immediate suggestions.

For Older Kids:

Trekking the National Parks—This was the last recommendation from my sister, it’s a game I wasn’t familiar with but it looks awesome. Players have to compete to race across the country, collecting park cards as they visit all the national parks along the way, and every time you play you can set the board up differently to allow for variations in play every time. This might show up under our tree this year because I’m super intrigued, although it says for ages 10 and up.

Battleship—The classic game of hit and sunk! So Asher can actually play this but I think it’s probably best for elementary aged kids. He doesn’t quite know how to play without giving away WAY too much information or “peeking” at mommy’s boats. (Today we played this one actually and he said “I have no boats in row A, B, or C mommy!” Thanks kiddo….)

Codenames—This is another favorite in my sister’s house for her 10 year old. The grown ups in our family learned how to play on our summer vacation this summer and it’s so fun but definitely for much older kids—10 and up. Players have to come up with things that are similar between a group of unsimilar cards and get their team mates to guess the secret “codenames” they are thinking of. It’s a social word-related game that I loved but definitely can’t play with my own kids just yet.

Hopefully this gave you a few new ideas! How about your family? What games do you love to play with your kids that don’t drive adults crazy??