what age for games?

I've been thinking it would be fun to find some games to play with the kids, but I'm not sure if they're old enough to "get it" yet. What has your experience been? And what are some good first games for kids? I know there's memory, but are there any really simple board games or card games or other things that your kids have gotten into this young?

TIA!

 

We have an Eric Carle memory card game that the girls like. I have Candy Land and Shoots and Ladders in the closet that I haven't broken out yet, but will soon. Our library has a couple of preschooler games that they've played there and they get the idea of spinning the spinner and then moving the marker a certain number of spots (or to a certain color, etc). BUT their attention is usually not long enough to finish a game.

 

My boys will play Hungry Hippos, Hi Ho Cherry O, Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Memory games, Elefun, and Cat and the Hat I can Do that. Granted, we don't follow the rules to a T and the attention span is VERY short, but they enjoy them.

 

I started Candyland at three and they were fine with that--I had a hard time playing it with them as it tried my patience to an extreme. :escape:
We also have another board game that is played as a team against chance--so we all win or we all loose. It's not from one of the big toymakers, but from a Colombian company and I don't believe it's available in the US. That game was good from 3 and they still play it at 6.

I took Kendra's advice and started playing UNO with my girls around 4 years old. At first we took out the skip, reverse, draw two, etc for them to get the hang of the game then after playing about 10 times we added those cards back into the deck. They love UNO. I believe the age rating is 7--kids much younger than 7 can play this game.

When my girls were 4 they learned to play Mancala, which is rated for 8 year olds. It was part of my brother's post stroke therapy, and my brother and I would play it while the girls watched us. Then they started asking to move the pieces for us, so we'd tell them which ones we wanted to move and they'd move them. By 4 years six months they were playing by themselves, and by 5 they could beat me if they went first!!! :shok:

This past summer I bought a Pictureka card game, it comes with rules for like 8 games but we've just played the memory one. It's actually like memory plus. You need to read so either a parent could read or we got it to stimulate our girls reading. You don't match identical pictures but things in a category. So like you draw the "mission" card that tells you what to match. A hat. Something to drink. A vehicle. Something from the sky. etc. and the cards are little pictures with a lot going on in them. So you try to find two hats, or two things to drink. If you fail the mission it's open to the other players, who might remember where they saw one of those things. It's great fun, we all enjoy playing this together. opcorn:

 

zingo, or any type of bingo game is also fun for this age, you can even do it without too much competition, just matching the pieces with the squares on your board

 

My two love games! We have Uno Moo, Candyland, Lucky Ducks, & a lot of other games that belong to the older kids that are technically a bit old for them but we change the rules a bit to accommodate their age. But their very favourite game is this one by Ravensburger. They will play that one for as long as I will sit & play with them!

 

Here is a past thread about games for this age group.

http://www.twinstuff.com/forum/index.php?/topic/137799-favorite-family-board-games/page__hl__games

 

Our problem wasn't understanding the rules, it was more the taking turns concept. Timothy didn't do real well at that till 4. Sarah would have been fine earlier.

Candyland- wonderful. It's moving forward matching the colors. My kids even developed backwards Candyland where you would go backwards. They loved it because that changed which cards you wanted to get.

Chutes and Ladders- Personally, I hate the game. My kids liked it. It can take an extremely long time to play. Have to be able to count accurately.

Hi, Ho Cherry-O- It was a good game. Works with simpler counting.

Uno- My kids have been playing for years. We started slow and worked into it.

Blokus- It's an adult game that has very simple rules. You have a board and 4 different colors of pieces. Within each color is all these completely crazy shaped pieces. You lay them on the board corner to corner (cannot lay sides against your own color) trying to trap out the other players from a part of the board. Whoever gets the most pieces down, wins. I've noticed the kids do well because they are so random in their choices. The adults try to out logic each other and the randomness of kids can beat the adults.

Go Fish- great for number recognition.


Marissa

 

My kids love candy land and shoots and ladders. We play a modified version of memory they love. Dominoes is also great at this age. I have been meaning to play UNO as I know they could. I think 3 is a great age to start games.

 

My kids like Uno Moo, Memory, Lucky Ducks, Elefun and just recently started playing Candyland (up until that point my daughter always wanted to be on purple). I have heard that Hi Ho Cheerio is good at this age, but haven't purchased that yet.

 

My girls love Candyland.

 

My kids love CandyLand, Elefun, Uno Moo, Go Fish, & "Squiggly Worms". They don't have the patience for Memory yet & Chutes and Ladders was a disaster, so that's packed away again. However, Candyland is SUCH a hit that they play it by themselves (I'm sure they cheat, but who cares!)...

 

My boys started being able to play some simple games at 2 1/2. Favorites at our house are Hi Hi CherryO, Zingo, the Candyland Castle game (a diff version of candyland for younger kids, more like bingo), Hullabaloo, dominos and mancala. Chutes and Ladders doesn't really work for us yet.

 

Not a board game, but my two are nutso for Elefun. (I picked it up for $1.50 at a yard sale!!)

 

Barnyard Bingo was the first game for both David and the twins. It was part of David's speech therapy and the twins love it. I'm sure they could play many others, if I could find the time. I'm not sure it's sold anymore. I should look, because we are missing 1 or 2 of the pieces.

 

I think it depends on what your kids know. If they know their basic colors, then you can start Candy Land with them, but you will have to help them sometimes with direction and following the board and not jumping to any random spot with that color. Memory is also good. When I first started playing it, we started with just six cards (three matches) and eventually have worked our way up to playing with 10 pairs. If they know their numbers up to six, Trouble is a great game to work on counting and one to one correspondence (moving one place for each number shown). However, I suggest you start with each player only having one piece rather than 4 as the game is normally designed for. I find that most of the game scan be tailored down for simplicity when you first start out. Like in Candy Land, I took out all the characters that make you go back to a certain space (partly because of the confusion and also to avoid them feeling sad that they had to go so far back. Yes, it caused a few tears, but after playing it for a couple of months, they understood it better and don't get upset anymore). And I didn't make them lose a turn if they landed on one of those spaces...in the beginning. Now we play with all the cards and rules. Also, an AMAZING game, that is great for teaching shapes, colors and object/cateogorization as well as good listening skills, is Hullabaloo. We've had HOURS AND HOURS of fun playing this game. Just make sure you wear socks or their feet stick to the pieces. If they are familiar with The Very Hungry Caterpillar book, they will probably love the board game. It's really cute. Also, we have been playing Dr. Seuss's Stretch ABC game which is like Twister on a very young level that teaches ABC's, letter sounds and objects that start with letters. Chutes and Ladder I don't love. It's very confusing to them with how many spaces they have to move and the numbers on the board. My girls can count and recognize numbers to 100, but they get totally confused with four spaces on numbers like 43, 44, 45, 46. And the way they have to move up to the next level is just too much. It's kind of annoying actually. Don't wake up Daddy is kind of fun and funny too. It's kind of a Jack in the box type feel so if that freaks your kids out, maybe not for you. My girls like it, but when they have to push the alarm button a certain number of times, they often ask me to do it. But, it's a really clever, adorable game.

You'd be surprised how many board games they can actually play if you just tailor it to their level and what they know. You can tweak any game to make it fun and allow them to learn at their own pace. Have fun. Board games definitely help to take away some of the "board"ness (Yes, it's a play on words )

Lastly, if you can hit a teacher's store or perhaps check online, they have really great Bingo games for all sorts of learning skills. colors, shapes, numbers to 10 or 100 if they're more advanced. Site word Bingo, United States Bingo (a favorite in our house) and on and on. The teacher stores in general just have great, great games and they are usually educational in some way, so you can't go wrong with that. As long as their fun, kids won't even realize how much they are learning.

hope that helps,

Mel