Monopoly
Ah Monopoly. There seems to be a million variation of Monopoly nowadays, but I’ve only ever owned the original out of loyalty to my 90s self. Who needs a Simpsons tie in or a Barbie tie in - give me plain old Monopoly with that poo brown shade of Old Kent Road any day.
Don’t be tempted to get the kid’s version of Monopoly with it’s limited currency denominations as you’ll find young children will quickly grow out of it (and it’s incredibly limited for the parents). We found our 6 old was happy to get stuck in with supervision and our 8 year old has no issues (and on the plus side, young children will be unwittingly developing their arithmetic skills).
There is a monumental risk of tantrum, but we should all remember that a Monopoly board flipped in rage is a healthy development landmark for any human being.
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Scrabble
This is a game that grows with the family. We found our 6 year old content with filling the word with 2 or 3 letter words (the hilarity of a board filled with “bum”, “poo” and “wee”), before graduating to 4 and 5 letter words as she grew older.
Some adults, myself included, never grow out of filling the board with 3 letter toilet humour inspired words.
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Guess Who?
Simple to play, fun and more importantly when you’ve had around 3 hours sleep - low energy. You quite literally only need a finger to flip a card down over and the ability to ask a short question.
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Snakes and Ladders
This is the first board game our kids every played. It’s mind numbingly dull from a parent’s perspective, but young kids (under 5) love it, and it provides a way for them to practice simple addition.
Inadvertently, Snakes and Ladders will become your child’s first introduction to cheating. Watch on in disgust as your child steadfastly refuses to travel down snakes. We register this as a 2 on the tantrum o-meter depending on whether you force your kids to go down the snakes…
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Chess
Kids will either love chess, or find it intensely boring. We have kids that fall in both camps. We recommend having an adult that is familiar with the game and can teach the basics. For 5 year olds, just teach them which pieces move where and don’t bother with the complexities of check-mating.
Once they’ve got the hang of that, play an adapted game where checking the King classes as a win - with time, you can move onto actual rules, provided your kids have an interest (with ours, we found this was around 6 years old).
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Top Trumps
There’s a Top Trumps for practically everything so you can be sure to find one that fits your children’s interests. Be warned though, after the first couple of minutes of nostalgia filled fun, you’ll soon realise that Top Trumps can go on for a long time. A really, really long time. Even if you try to sabotage the game and lose by choosing the lowest score, somehow it continues to drag on.
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Jigsaws
A great emergency rainy day activity, a good collection of Jigsaw puzzles will go a long way. We found the Mouse In a House Jigsaw puzzles to be a great balance of being challenging for young kids and interesting enough to keep adults entertained.
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Jenga
Great fun, but this scores high on the tantrum-meter for particularly young kids…
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Twister
Want to remind yourself that you’re old and can no longer touch your feet? Want to injure yourself as you try to put left hand on green? Want to make pathetic grunting noises no matter where the spinner lands? Look no further.
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Shut The Box
Shut the box has been around forever, but we only got introduced to it a couple of years ago.
Great for kids and arithmetic, and really addictive - I’ve found myself mindlessly playing this when I’ve got nothing to do.
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Connect 4
Really simple to learn and play - this is a great game to introduce young children to game strategy and thinking ahead.
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