Just because your Littles are, well, little, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a fun-filled family game night. And, no, I’m not talking about the endless torture of that candy-themed game during which you secretly want to drown your character in the Molasses Swamp. No, these games that are perfect for not-yet-readers are ones that my family played well after the halcyon days of preschool.
Robot Turtles
Who says kids can’t code? In this charming game from ThinkFun, players “program” their robot turtles with cards to follow commands and avoid obstacles around the game board.
Designer Dan Shapiro invented this game for his then-four-year-old twins to challenge the notion that “kid games were [designed to win by] either pure luck or a frustrating exercise in losing the game on purpose without the child noticing.”
Non-readers succeed by interpreting the symbols on the cards that give their turtles commands, like turn left, turn right, or move forward. As players master maneuvering their turtles, the game introduces increasing levels of difficulty with additional obstacles or “programming” tasks. Can you say “lasers”?
By playing Robot Turtles, kids learn rudimentary coding skills, cause-and-effect, problem-solving, and resilience as they plan, “program”, “debug”, and master the board.
Chickapiglets
The little sibling to Kickstarter darling, Chickapig, Chickapiglets is a hilarious riff on the classic Memory game mechanic. But with cows. And poop.
Inventor Brian Calhoun scaled down the mechanics of Chickapig without sacrificing the silliness and incorporated a cooperative mode of gameplay that makes it fun for everyone to play together.
The players’ goal as one of four Chickapiglets (adorable chicken/pig hybrids) is to find parts for and assemble crazy hybrid animals before their arch-nemesis, the aforementioned Pooping Cow, and reach the finish line first.
The artwork is darling, the hybrid animals will crack you up, and the game offers suggestions for increasing levels of difficulty that give a fair amount of replay value.
Raccoon Rumpus
Underpants are funny. Let’s just get that out of the way first. In Educational Insights clever matching game, raccoons have raided your closet and are ready to party!
Roll the dice to see what color and article of clothing your raccoon wants to wear, then slip that costume card over your molded raccoon base. Keep collecting costumes to win, but don’t roll underpants! You’ll have to put all of your cards back on the playing field and start over.
With a little bit of matching, a pinch of color identification, and a ton of style, Raccoon Rumpus will charm the pants off you and your family.
Create a Story / Rory's Story Cubes
Create a Story Cards by Eeboo are one of my kids’ favorite ways to show off their imagination and storytelling skills. With beautiful illustrations, the cards in each uniquely themed deck can be arranged and rearranged for a seemingly infinite number of combinations. As players layer on their original narrative tying together the people, locations, objects, and props, every hand dealt is a brand-new adventure.
Rory’s Story Cubes from Zygomatic Games has a similar mechanic in dice form, which makes them great for travel. With nine dice in a set, players weave a story any way they can with their interpretation of the 54 available icons.
Both Create a Story cards and Rory’s Story Cubes have multiple different themed editions. You’ll never run out of stories to tell!
First Orchard
The junior version of Haba USA’s classic Orchard is another cooperative game that pits players against a hungry raven. Players take turns “harvesting” four different kinds of chubby, adorable wooden fruits from the trees in the orchard by rolling the chunky dice.
The fruit you add to the basket depends on what you roll, but if the raven comes up, he’ll inch closer and closer to the orchard. If the players harvest all of the fruit before that sneaky raven reaches the gate, you all win!
Great for promoting turn-taking, color recognition, and understanding simple game rules. As a bonus, the fruits are also great for pretend play!
Spot It
In the Beginning, my little sister and I played Slap Jacks. Many, many ruined playing card decks and sibling arguments later, my parents banned the game from my household. Fortunately, Zygomatic Games’ Spot It has all of the competition with significantly less confrontation.
Each card in the deck has icons in assorted sizes. Between any two cards, there is always one icon that matches. If you can spot the match before the other players, you add your card to the pile. The matching continues until the winner is out of cards.
With dozens of themed Spot It decks on the market, there’s bound to be a version for just about everyone. Spot it is portable, replay-able, stocking-stuff-able, and a whole lot of fun.
Gravity Maze
Put your logic skills to the test as you enlist gravity as your partner in ThinkFun’s puzzler, Gravity Maze.
Part marble run, part maze, Gravity Maze requires players to assemble tunnels and towers in such a way that the marble can get from the top of the maze to the finish line without tumbling off the structure or getting stuck.
Three levels of difficulty keep the challenges fresh, pushing your problem-solving abilities to the limit. We love to play this cooperatively, because the more budding engineers, the better the outcome!
Color Brain - Disney Edition
As a self-proclaimed Disney addict, it was enough that Big Potato Games’ Color Brain was Disney-themed in order for me to purchase it for our family game collection. But to my surprise and delight, Color Brain is a fun, fast trivia game that rewards the player whose mental Disney vault is broad and deep.
The game starts with each player receiving a rainbow of eleven color cards. The answer card is drawn, and the Disney-themed question challenges the players to answer from memory with their corresponding color cards. “What are Dory’s two colors?” “What color is Doc’s beard?” “What color is Anna’s coronation gown?” If any of the other players slip up, fill in a point on the adorably themed scorecard. The first player to 10 points wins!
With 250 cards that span the Disney and Pixar film library, Disney fans of just about any age will have a blast playing.
(Also, my kids delight in playing as a team in order to try and crush the grownups with their Disney knowledge, so even the littlest Disney fan can get in on the fun.)
Tsuro: The Game of the Path
Imagine that you’re a flying dragon. In Calliope Games’ Tsuro, players embody rival dragons that swoop, soar, and dive across an ever-evolving game board.
As tiles are laid turn-by-turn, each player’s dragons follow the path that emerges as adjacent tiles reveal which direction you’re headed next.
The strategy comes in when you decide whether to lay your tile to advance your dragon, or to sabotage another’s path. Don’t bump into another dragon, or fly off the edge of the board. Then you’re out. The last dragon standing wins.
Get lost in the stunning artwork of Tsuro while you build skills like strategic thinking, spatial relations, and cause-and-effect.
Lego Creationary
I would be remiss if I didn’t include at least one of the releases from Lego Games. Sadly, the physical board games were discontinued in 2013, but we were able to amass a fair collection of them over the years.
Imagine if you had to play Charades, but you only were allowed to build your answers with Lego bricks… Creationary is a great family game where everyone’s creativity gets a chance to shine!
Roll the bouncy Lego die to determine what your building category is: Buildings, Nature, Vehicles, or Things, and draw the corresponding card with an image on it. Then, with no instructions to guide you, use the enclosed bricks, parts, and figures for a build that is your best interpretation of what’s on the card. The more recognizable your build, the more likely players can guess what it is.
Three levels of difficulty allow each player to work at the building level that is just right for them.
The Lego Games releases can be tough to track down, but I’ve had good luck with specialty collector sites like Bricklink or Bricks & Minifigs. Happy building!
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