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What I Love About Board Games

Board games are a great way to spend time together. While our some game days lead to laughter and others quickly escalate to fighting among my kids, this pass time helps me reach three goals:

• build memories
• teach patience
• limit screen time

For me, winning the game is not collecting the most properties or being first to get rid of my cards, but rather watching my kids learn to let others go first and learn to lose with grace. I also cherish the silly giggles and sneaky strategies used. Currently, we play when there’s an extra adult to entertain the toddler or when she is napping. I look forward to the day we can all play together!Here are some games that we have been able to play – some adapted with simpler rules – for a wide variety of ages (4yo plus). We are always looking for more board games to play. Send me a DM on Insta to let me know what games your family loves or which ones hilariously failed.

Clue

As a lover of murder mysteries (I have read every Agatha Christie book), I couldn’t WAIT for the day my kids could play with Clue with me. It took a while for them to develop some strategy to guessing the rooms, weapons, and characters. The younger kid who was 5yo when we started, really enjoyed it because she liked to act out being a peacock and thoughts Colonel Mustard was really funny. At first, I told my kids that we were trying to find out who stole what weapon from which room. A couple years later when I gleefully introduced them to the hilarious movie Clue, I had to admit that actually, we were guessing who killed Mr. Body in which room with what weapon. This game goes a little faster than Monopoly, so we are able to play a few rounds in an afternoon.

Monopoly

Monopoly is fun for my kids because some of the property names match local streets or streets from beach vacations along the Jersey shore. Each kid has a role that matches their capabilities (8yo older one is in charge of the bank and the 5yo younger one who can now read words is the real estate agent). The math is a little hard for the younger kid, but we help her a lot and she has fun collecting her cash. We just have to make sure we are not in a hurry between activities to allow plenty of time to acquire houses and hotels.

Memory

Memory is an excellent game with even young players. I love this “I never forget a face” set that was gifted to us from a friend. It has faces from kids across the globe, which hopefully increases my kids’ awareness of diversity and creates opportunities for us to be curious and learn about different cultures. Here, I’m multitasking holding the baby while using my toes to choose my cards. I’ve also pumped while playing, which the kids don’t mind. They just want to spend time with mommy.

Cards

Cards are very versatile. There’s a variety of games we can play, and they run the gamut of time requirements. They are also small and fit in any bag or pocket. We can play at home or while traveling. One of the kids’ favorite games is spoons. Here are instructions for it:

• Spoons -Best played with 4-6 people. Each play gets 4 cards. The rest of the cards goes face down in the center. Spoons or other objects are placed in the center – however many players minus one. The first person picks a card, decides if they want to exchange it with a current card, and passes the unwanted card to the next player, and so on. After the last player, the card goes face down into a second pile. When a player collects 4 cards of the same number, they quietly collect the object in the center. Other players who notice will follow. The player who does not collect loses.

Labyrinth

This game was introduced to my kids by my husband. He played this game when he was younger. The goal is to create a path from your game piece to the object on your card by moving one board piece per turn. Some times it’s luck, sometimes there’s strategy that we can visually see. But it’s always fun, and we can end the game at any time, or keep going by getting more object cards.

What board games does your family or friends enjoy playing together? Let’s connect on Instagram. Let me know which games you love! I’ll also share time management tips there if you would love to find more time to have quality time with yourself, your friends, and/or your family.

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