Game night, board games for kids 3 and up!
I love games. I really look forward to the day when I can sit with my family for hours and play rummy or monopoly. For now, we are enjoying some kid friendly games. Games are a great way to keep those young minds working without feeling like they are doing work. With my son starting school, and my daughter entering kindergarten, I am trying to keep those brains in motion. Here are my favorites:
Super Why ABC Letter Game
2-4 players
Ages 3+
My kids love to watch Super Why and this game is a great extension of the show. You move around the board and select cards from one of the four character piles - Alpha Pig, Wonder Red, Princess Pesto, and Super Why. Players will have to match upper and lower case letters, come up with words that rhyme with other words, identify initial letter sounds (including blends), match words to pictures and replace words so sentences make sense. What is great about this game is that children can grow with it. My 3 year old can work on recognizing letters while my 5 year old can find the words to match a picture. This is a great pre-reading skill building game.
Headbandz
2-6 players
Ages 7+
This is a fun, ‘who am I’ game where you wear a ‘crown’ (as my daughter calls it, and come on, what kid doesn’t want to wear a crown?!) with a picture it in and you have to guess what your picture is. This is a great game to work on categories and asking appropriate questions. So, even though my kids are young, we are practicing. First I encourage them to think of a broad category - is it an animal, is it something you eat, can it go? Once we determine the category - say, an animal, then we go further and try to think - does it live on a farm, does it live in the ocean, can it fly? We have been having a lot of fun with this game.
Matching Game
1 or more players
Ages 3+
This game is great because they have so many editions - various Disney characters - Princesses, Minnie Mouse, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, they have superhero, Curious George, and Dr Seuss, and, there are a variety of companies that make them - so you can find beautifully illustrated ones (eeboo makes beautiful games), or ones that match a specific interest of your child. In our house we have a few versions, and lately, since my son loves Mickey Mouse, our most played with set is a Disney character one. Now, we play this game a few different ways. We will do the traditional memory version, trying to match pairs, but, we are right now working with my son to describe items, so, we will lay several cards face up and describe one for someone to guess. For example, I will say, ‘I see one wearing red shorts, yellow shoes, and white gloves’ - Mickey Mouse! It is good because again, you can work on eliminating and categorizing - for example, there are several water based characters, so I can say ‘I see one that lives in the ocean (Flounder, Sebastian, Nemo) 'that has claws', so, now you know it is Sebastian. This is great for both of my kids to work on describing and using details to differentiate between similar pictures.
Make your own board games via DIY Board Games For Kids
Posted by Erica
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