Forbidden Island: Flooded with Cooperation and Connection You lost the game. I repeat, you lost the game. The group sits quietly, absorbing the loss as you all stare at the table because the tile you needed to escape the island just sank. Then the oldest child speaks. “I wonder if we hadn’t used the card […]
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How to Explain the Rules Faster than the Rulebook Let’s face it, sometimes you don’t have time to let every player do their own perusal of the rulebook, especially if you’re playing with kids! You’d rather spend your limited time playing the game and enjoying yourselves. And those rulebooks can get pretty dense, especially if
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Sleeping Queens: A Kid’s Game that Invites Everyone to the Table You used to play games all the time, but young kids don’t really mix with board games or card games and you’re raising a toddler (or two!). You’re looking to fill the days with fun activities you and the toddler can do together. There
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Best Cooperative Board Games While playing competitive board games, players often strategize quietly, a running internal monologue that hopefully ends in a win. You keep all your moves to yourself in hopes the other players won’t find ways to undercut your game or thwart your best move. And if it happens, watch out. Sore losers,
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Sorry: A Simple Classic Shines for Mixed Age Groups Sorry is a kid’s game, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Not in my opinion. Sure, it’s simple, which makes it easy for kids to play. It’s also very heavily randomized, which makes it harder to apply strategy to the game because sometimes the cards just won’t favor
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How to Help Your Sore Loser Enjoy the Game It’s happening again. Your child wanted to jump into a game with the family that’s more difficult, sure they could handle it. Except they lost. Now they’re crying, angry, maybe even throwing things. Instead of the chance to clean up the game together, talking over the
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Ticket to Ride: Original or First Journey? The choice is not as simple as it sounds. It’s easy to tell you to get the kid version if you have kids, but that wouldn’t do these games justice. The ages on the box don’t tell you anything about what it’s like to play these games. If
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Best Board Games for 3-4 Players Sometimes you know exactly which game you want to play. Sometimes you don’t. On those days you don’t, you’ll use several different points of reference to make that decision. Probably things like simple or complex, long or short, or how many people want to play. Maybe you’ve got a
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Castle Panic: Cooperative Fun for All Ages Imagine this. You have one tower left on the board and the troll will destroy it at the end of this turn. The game will be over, the monsters victorious. Your middle-schooler has the right card to win the game, but it isn’t their turn. It’s your 5-year-old’s
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Uno: A Handful of Cards for a Lifetime of Fun You played it as a kid, surrounded by siblings. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost, sometimes you fought, but you mostly remember playing together. Then you grew up and had your own kids. You sat down and taught them each how to play, until one
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Best Board Games and Card Games for Toddlers and Preschoolers Kids this age are a tough crowd. They want your time and attention, but maybe you’ve read the same book 20 (million) times already and you’re looking for something different to do. Cue introducing board games and card games. It’s a new activity that allows
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Carcassonne: The Simplest Way to Bring Fun to the Table You’ve got a new game to play. You sit down with family or friends, open the box, and pull everything out. You’re reading the instructions, trying to figure out how to play and identify the game components simultaneously, but you can’t find them. One person
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