Why Board Games are so good for kids💥, and a list of our favorites! (with a giveaway!)
How board games benefit kids and some of our favorites for all ages!
–See bottom for a chance to win a gift card for your next board game!
As all parents (my husband and I included!) navigate family life in a screen-saturated culture, I continue to circle back to my favorite perspective: Let’s focus on all of the good, healthy, positive (and fun!) things kids can do that don’t require screens. Sure, we need to play some defense as we are raising kids with technology, but I’m also a believer in switching the focus to allllll of the great things kids can do freely, without limits or filters, and cheer them on in those things!
I’m talking: park-playing, tree-climbing, ball-chasing, book-reading, pool-swimming, fort-building, board game-playing, bubble-blowing, cookie-baking, play-dough forming, story-writing, memory-making activities. (Remember those?)
While my husband and I like to get our boys outdoors for sports or other activities as much as we can, we love to huddle up in the evenings (or on a rainy day) to do fun things as a family. (which often includes a few friends, too!)
We enjoy a good movie as much as anyone, but we try to make movies a treat, not an every night event.
Board games have grown to be our family’s favorite indoor, down-time activity. And one thing I love about board games is that they offer a lot of benefits for everyone involved. Find a few specific benefits for kids below:
3 benefits of board games for kids
- Board games help kids build cognitive skills. Many games require basic math skills, strategy, problem solving, and quick reactions (and much more!) While playing board games, kids are learning without even knowing it! 💥
- Board games help kids develop social skills. They offer kids a chance to learn to communicate and interact with others. They learn to take turns, to cooperate, to win and lose, and practice many other prosocial behaviors. Kids in my (highly competitive) family also learn some healthy banter and a bit of smack-talk along the way. (all in fun, of course!🫣)
- Board games are a great opportunity for character building! If you want a chance to see how well your child practices patience, handles stress, or responds to winning and losing?…play a board game with them! By just observing them at play, you might note some character traits to focus on in the days ahead. You might also talk about specific character qualities while you are playing, encouraging kids to show you how well they can ______ (“practice patience”, “play with integrity”, “stay honest” etc.)
There are, of course, more great benefits to playing board games — like family bonding and memory making, a break from screens, and an opportunity to bring many generations and personalities together!
Next I will share a list of some of our family’s favorite games. My boys have grown to love card games, so I will include a few favorites. (Luke learned a lot of card games while traveling for surf competitions, and we now always travel with a deck- or 3 — of cards!) I’m also including a few games which were the most recommended when I did a poll on social media!
Favorite Board Games:
BOARD GAMES for younger kids through adults:
*Some good for very young, but most of these I’d consider elementary and up…In fact many of these we still love to play (ie: Apples to Apples!)
Apples to Apples (a Swanson family favorite!)
Bananagrams (another family favorite!)
The Game of Life
Pretty Pretty Princess (for young girls, and of course this was recommended to me by a #girlmom pal!)
Rummikub (we don’t have this but it got LOTS of votes in my poll!)
Phase 10 (also recommended by many in my poll!)
BOARD GAMES for older kids and adults:
CHESS. My boys all love it.
Cover your Assets (our family’s recent favorite!)
Monopoly Deal (faster than the old school one!)
*A few more recommended in my Instagram Poll:
Ticket to Ride (says ages 8 and up but it is a longer game.)
CARDS GAMES:
*You can search up rules for these:
Nertz, Spades, Speed, Crazy 8s, Rich Man Poor Man, and (does anyone but me still love) Solitaire! 😉?
I hope you discover a few new games this summer!
BOARD GAME GIVEAWAY!!
Leave a comment at the bottom sharing something your family loves to do together OR a favorite game you enjoy, and you’ll be entered to win a $30 Amazon gift card to get your family a new board game! GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!
Congratulations Brandy! Your Amazon card will be on its way! 🙂 XO
ALSO DON’T MISS IT: For more practical ways to focus on kids’ growth, development, and character this summer, be sure to grab my free GUIDEBOOK ($24 value!): “What to Expect in Each Stage of Development”
Whether your kids are preschool or high school (or anywhere in between) you’ll find helpful resources, fun facts and practical tips, quotes and verses, book suggestions, and developmental milestones to be aware of!
Click on the image to get it now!
After you get the guidebook I will follow up over the next few weeks with a few more helpful resources and freebies to encourage you in your parenting! (This is my favorite thing to do!)
**ALSO NOTE: MY popular CHARACTER TRAINING COURSE WILL BE OPEN FROM MONDAY, June 23 to FRIDAY, June 27th only! Leave your name on the interest list so you don’t miss this SUMMER SALE!!
Comment below and you’ll be entered to win an AMAZON GIFT CARD!!
One of our favorites is Wahoo or Aggravation, it’s a marble and dice game that accommodates up to 6 players. You can find cardboard versions on amazon but my favorite is a wooden plywood six sided circle that a local made. It’s so beautiful you can have it in plain sight and instigate play more easily. We love it to play with new friends the kids bring over. We always end up laughing and seeing new characteristics in people.
We’ve been enjoying rummikub 🙂
Our family has always loved playing the Game of Life.
We love to play board games especially as a family. Our 5 year old son’s faves right now are Mickey and the beanstalk, Disney enchanted cupcake party, and Snack o saurus Rex.
One of our favorites is Rummikub!!!
Our current favorites are: Settlers of catan, scattergories and wingspan (teenage boys). We also love ticket to ride, monopoly deal, and skull king.
We love to play Phase10 with our boys and their grandmother every Friday night after homemade pizza!
My kids are currently in their candy lane , bugs in the kitchen, guess who, spot it and busy town era. Huge board game fans.
We have been loving Dutch Blitz game! It’s fast paced and very exciting!
We love playing games together! Some of our favorites are Kingdomino, Azul, Phase 10, SkipBo, Settlers of Catan, Planet, Sleeping Queens, The Disney Princess Cupcake game, Apples to Apples, Scattegories, and Dominion.
We love doing so many different things together! But I can honestly say the thing that can keep us ALL engaged for HOURS is magnatiles!! It’s so fun! Hubby and I and my oldest son (6 yrs) will build all kinds of things while my youngest (2 yrs) will “help” or wait patiently until we finish so he can knock it down! We record the demolition in slow motion so we can all enjoy it over and over! It’s delightful!
My girls, ages 5 and 6 LOVE board and card games. One of their new favorite card games is Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese Pizza. We have a few of the games that are by the same company and they love them. Some of their favorite board games are Outfoxed and collaborative games like Stone Soup, Race to the Treasure, and Mermaid Island.
Catan and Carcassone
Our favourite family game is Catan. We also enjoy a good round of crib sometimes or UNO.
We love Up and Down the River and Spades over here for card games. Board game for the whole family is Blank Slate.
Ticket to Ride-we enjoy the junior version with our kids and the regular one with friends!
We LOVE board games!!
We have been playing Yahtzee with our kids since they were little, now they are in their teens and 20s and still love to play as a family along with Grammy.
My kids are still little (my oldest is 4), so Headbandz and Guess in 10 Junior are our current family favorites! But when we get together with extended family, Lotería is always a hit—especially when we up the ante and play with money. It gets competitive in the best way!
Great list!! And thank you for the reminder of playing board games. My kiddos are at a great age for playing and sometimes we overlook playing board games! Thank you for the list, too! I need to update our selection 😎🙌🏻
We love board games and our grandchildren say the thing they most enjoy about visiting us is game time. Our favorites are ticket to ride and chicken foot dominoes.
My family loves Scrabble, Battleship, Mousetrap, and Monopoly.
We are a musical family who likes to play and sing together, and sometimes we’ll watch a movie. A favorite family game is Snake Oil, and we also love Sounds Fishy. Those both make us laugh so hard! We do also love Phase 10, if we’ve got the time, and the card game Trash is easier even for young ones. 😊
Our family’s favorite game to play together is ocean Bingo! All the art is so beautiful of each creature and any age can play!
Some of our favorite board games are Who Knew?
Sequence
UNO
Apples to Apples
LIFE
Our family enjoys Qwirkle and Cribbage. Other outside the box games that are fun Santorini and Acuity. Thank you for all of your good information always!
Lots of good ones! We love the Labyrinth board game!
My family enjoys Mexican Train Dominoes, Uno, Guess Who?, Othello, and Battleship. Several of these are two player, but super fun!
My boys (5 and 3) love mousetrap! We also love going to parks and on adventures to new trails.
My boys (5 and 3) love mousetrap! And we love going to parks or on adventures to new trails.
Our family loves to go park and splashpad hopping around the city. We love to go on bike rides. But we also love to play board games. Right now, we love to play Dragonwood and Uno flip. We also love cover your assets and other grandpa Beck’s games!
We have a 4 and 8 year old boys and we love playing the Dude Perfect board game for some friendly competition. A lot of laughter and high fives (and learning opportunities for good sportsmanship)! We also like to play bingo as a family and Lotería, the Mexican version. Trouble and Sorry are close favorites also. It’s hard to find a game that a four-year-old and eight-year-old can play together, but those 4 are great! We also like to have family jam days where we all pick an instrument, turn some music on and pretend we know how to play, haha!
My family enjoys card games! Some of our favorites are Hearts, Unexploded Cows, and a new one to us Scare Moose. Love hearing about new games for us to try 😃
Our youngest are twins that just turned 7 so we are trying to spend more family time playing games! Our favorites are apples to apples, spot it, and monopoly deal! Thanks for your list of suggestions!
We are loving Flip7 this summer (cheap card game that’s easy to learn and tons of people can play which makes it great for groups)!
We are a family of 6 and now that my youngests (twins) are 7, we are trying to play more family games that everyone can participate in! We also love apples to apples, spot it, and monopoly deal! Thanks for the list of new suggestions!
We enjoy playing games and really should make time for them more! My hubby and son enjoy Risk and Axis and Allies! A few of us enjoy Stratego, Scattergories, Sequence, Bird Bingo, Battleship, Allowance, and more!! Such great benefits and fabulous alternative for screens.
We love playing trouble or ticket to ride as a family.
A few of our family’s favorites are Rat-a-Rat Cat, Sleeping Queens and Clue.
My son is nearly 3.5 and we have started playing more games with him the past few months. Finding games that are actually enjoyable but not too challenging or time consuming at this age is a challenge. We often will borrow from the library which helps us try new ones and test out if they are right for his age/abilities now. This week we borrowed Race to the Treasure. It said ages 5+ but he was adamant that “dad could teach and help him even though it’s for 5 years old ” 😀
Well, he was right! it was the perfect game for us! It was not too difficult and can be played in 10 mins or so. Highly recommend!
Other games he currently likes:
Sorry & Trouble
Hoot Owl Hoot
Pete the Cat Groovy Buttons
We love playing board games as a family! I often buy a new one each Christmas!
our favourites are: Ticket to ride, Catan, Blokus, Boggle
Ticket to Ride is a favorite for my 9 year old! We also love Monopoly Jr. Thanks for the recs!
Each night after dinner we have connection time as a family before bed. We take turns picking a game to play then a book to read as a family. Our family favorite at the moment is piggy piggy card game so many laughs!
We love the game of Life. It has taught my son so much from a young age. How to count and mange money, life’s haphazards, the importance of a good education (good job vs not so good) and its financial impact on his future, the dangers of overspending and the “red” money has taught about debt. Taking chances on the stock market doesn’t always pay, family planning, and planning for unexpected expenses, teaching about taxes, and so many other life skills. Payday is always good! 😄
I have younger boys and two household favorites are Zingo and Rack-O Jr!
Our current favorite game to play as a family is Ticket to Ride Jr. When my in-laws come over for dinner we play the Jr version and then once our boys are in bed we pull out the adult version.
These are great suggestions – thank you! We love playing dominos/Mexican train version!
We love going on bike rides and pool days! Mom to 4 boys 6 and under!
we love card games too like Five Crowns and Phase 10!
Our family enjoys discovering new games, especially ones we can play with larger groups. Chameleon, Skip Bo, Phase 10, Uno, Apples to Apples, Anomia, Azul, Name Game/Fishbowl Game.
Our favorite thing to do as a family is our Friday night family night! We watch a family movie, eat pizza, and play games. Our favorite family board game right now is Life Jr!
Our favorite thing to do as a family is our Friday night family night! We watch a family movie, eat pizza, and play games. Our favorite family board game right now is Life Jr!
Our new favorite board game is called “Blank Slate”. It’s a blast! We can play with kids who can read (it’s fill in the blank) all the way up to our senior parents in the 80s and 90s. I highly recommend it for families. It’s easy and there is strategy to it. Thanks for a chance to win, too.
My family used to play “Life” for hours, and now it’s all about Uno!
We love playing board games and card games. Our new fav is five crowns!
Summer in Arizona is beyond hot, so we play lots of games during peak heat hours. Favorites include: Blokus, Quirkle, Life, Trouble, Uno, and Sleeping Queens (a card game).
We love playing catan travel version. It cones with dice and such a fun quick game together 🙂
My kids have just recently gotten into Chess, so the whole family is learning and loving! We love to play Monopoly Deal! Bananagrams looks like a fun one too!
My kids love Go Fish, sink n sand, and Connect Four! We also love to play eye spy or brown bear brown bear while we are driving in the car or walking.
some favorites over here is ticket to ride, forbidden island (team game everyone has to work together) and la petite fleur
Code names has become a family favorite as well as Dutch Blitz and the ever popular spoons! Lots of memories made playing games the family. My son loves the strategy games like Catan and Ticket to Ride but we don’t want to play since we always end up losing!
Right now we are loving Rubik’s Race and Farkle. Both are quick games, so helps with attention span!
A few of our family’s favorites are Rat-a-Tat Cat, Sleeping Queens and Clue.
We love, love playing games. UNO and Monopoly are top games, but we’ve recently come to love Monopoly Deal! It’s fast and can be played with two or more players. It’s been great for one-on-one time with my tween boy.
Yes, this! Playing board games is a great way to bring everyone together to have fun while doing something meaningful. It’s a win/win! Favorite games are rummicub, monopoly, chess, jenga, and Chinese checkers.
A couple family fav’s are Blokus (like Tetris but a board game!), Dominoes, and Texas Hold Em’! haha! But we switch it up… for awhile we were on a big Aggravation kick, but the kids were getting very aggravated!
We play lots of games as a homeschool family! Recent new favorite is Zues on the Loose. Also love Sleeping Queens, and a few classics from my childhood – Racko & Scattergories.
We love board and card games! We recently got a simpler, cards only version of Apples to Apples and it was so fun to include my 5 year old (now that he can read!). He absolutely loved either making up reasons for his choices or saying “I don’t know, I just thought it would be funny!” Everyone made sure that he won at least 1 card per go around to keep him happy and engaged 😉 We also love Kids vs Parents Taboo, which was a great option for playing one of my all time favorite games while 2 of our kids are still too young for the original…it levels the playing field between ages. For a long time, my kids (some ADHD intense emotions) could only handle cooperative ganes, and we found the Forbidden Island series of games a good step up in that category when the younger cooperative games became too boring.
A couple years ago I bout Sorry! For our family for Christmas, and everyone played it for a week straight! (My kids were ages 2-10 at the time.) It’s still a favorite.
We love love playing games together! Especially doing late nights with our older two when the younger kids are bed. Our absolute favorite games are Play Nine, Farkle, and Qwuixx!!! We all
My family loves getting out in nature together and go on nature trails.
We are loving UNO and Candy Land with our 3 and 5 year old boys!
My husband and I love to play Codenames with friends — we also always enjoy when our friends bring over their favorite games to introduce us to!
Thank you!
We have three boys, so we are always looking for games that all five of us can play together, not just 2-4 player games. Piggy piggy is the current family fave! Up to 6 people can play, it’s simple, and it can either go quickly or for several rounds depending on card draw and strategy, so it never gets boring! Plus the different colored pig figurines make it extra fun 🤩
Our favorite board game/card game is aggravation. We are a family of six and there are exactly 6 spots on the board. There’s a lot of strategy but also just some luck of the draw. It’s also a good game for a wide age of kids. You can be competitive, be aggressive and get people out, or learn to give people a little grace and not get them out. We not only play this with our family, but with the grandparents too!
You have a couple new ones I’m going to check out! I’m more of a card game gal but always ‘game’ to try something new!!
Our family’s favorite game is a special card game set called Phase 10.
We also enjoy the teen/kid version of Catch Phrase!
We LOVE playing games together! Some of our newer favorites are Machi Koro II and Skyjo. My boys have also recently discovered just how funny Apples To Apples can be, and, of course, who doesn’t love a great game of UNO?! It spans the ages 🙂
We have a family favorite of Go Wheels, which is like Go Fish, but all vehicles of some kind. Perfect for boys! 😆
Thank you for this! My kiddo LOVES cars 🚗
Some of our family favorite games are Blockus, Banana Blast, Beat the Flood, and Spot it.
We love all kinds of games! We’ve recently discovered “swoosh” – a card game which is great for a large group of people. All you need is 2+ decks of cards (depending on how many people are playing).
We also love Trekking- National Parks, SkyJo, and of course GinRummy. 😊
Our family (teens to adults) enjoy playing pinochle, Cantan, Dominos, 5 Crowns, Ticket to Ride, Uno Colors and many more.
We love playing spicy uno and connect four! Also while not a board game, we’ve really enjoyed playing tennis together 🙂
Our family is loving Uno Golf right now too. Quick and fun!
Cascadia and Skyjo are two of our family’s favorites!
My 6 year old son LOVES games!! Any and all that we’ve tried. He’s teaching my 3 year old to love them too! Don’t Wake Daddy is a fun little kids game. Skip Bo is a family favorite, too!
This blog has been very helpful! Our current favorite board game is organ attack 😄
Our family favorites are Monopoly, Life, and Uno No Mercy (not a favorite for this Mom, but my boys love it haha).
We’ve recently gone “old school” with Yahtzee (my game from the 1980s!) and also have enjoyed Farkle (dice game). We played Ransom Notes at a friend’s house – where you are given a prompt and then use small tiles with individual words to create a response. Some of the words/prompts can be inappropriate, so we discarded those. There were lots of laughs – the kids had more creativity than I ever imagined! My boys are 14 & 12.
We love playing Spicy Uno, with teens to young adult kids this is a big favorite! Look up rules online, takes classic Uno to a new level.
We love games at our house! Some newer games we have gotten are Planted, Wingspan, and I’m a big fan of the Lord of the Rings- Adventure to Mount Doom
A favourite game for younger kids is Outfoxed (a cooperative game) and a step up from that is Museum Suspects. I like Wingspan and my oldest likes Seven Wonders.
Cribbage is our family’s favorite.
Our family used to play Mah Jongg, but it plays best with four players.
Blokus, Rummicub, card games too.
I’m a boymom too and we looove Settlers of Catan! Would love to try some of these other games with my fam
Our family has gotten more into games lately since I’ve been implanting more screen free time, and next we are doing no tech Tuesdays. A whole day without any electronics ( and maybe no music even 😱). It’s hard to push against the hustle. I just listened to The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Marc Comer and further spurred what the Holy Spirit has had on my heart for a while. Thanks for sharing this Monica!
P.S. one of our fave board games is the kids version Catan
We love to play Sushi Go! Good for a range of ages (8, 10, & 13)
Our family loves to play together. We 3 boys (12, 9, 5), we play a card/board game any chance we get but they’re absolute fav family activity is to play wall ball in the basement on a rainy night!
We love board games too! And I agree with every single point of this article! Some that we’ve love on your list are chess, catan, and monopoly, Others we’ve loved but not on your list are clue, risk, tapple, uker, skipbo, skipbo golf, and cooperative games like castle panic and forbidden dessert. Not really board games but three large group games we like playing are characters, mafia, and jackbox.
My family loves playing Scrabble at night together but they do get impatient with me and say I take too long trying to create a word.
We are huge game players at our house! My husband works from home so during his lunch break, we all eat lunch and play Sleeping Queens or a new favorite, 3-2-1 Countdown, and it’s something we all look toward to! For Levi, you really need to check out Play Nine. We play it with our extended families and friends all the time and everyone loves it. Even the non golfers!
The Toms Family Race (similar to candy land but personalized with their faces!) 9, 5, 4 yr olds.
Some great ideas for new games. We also like board games in our house. A couple of our favorites right now are Sorry, Sleeping Queens, and Disney Villans version of Clue.
Our family loves board games. Two of our favs are Dutch Blitz, which is technically a card game, and unmatched. Unmatched has taken our family game time by storm!
We have three kiddos 6 and under and they love playing Zingo, Go Fish (Colorado edition), and Spot It. I’m excited to try Guess Who Animal Edition!
I recently learned that our library has games for checkout, so it’s been a great way to see which ones we enjoy and are worth purchasing. We love Ticket to Ride, Wordsters, and Racko!