Rush Hour

This is such an addictive puzzle game and as fun for adults as it is for kids. Get a little plastic (a bit too plasticky and cheap feeling for our liking) car out of a traffic jam is the aim of the game, with a huge number of increasingly difficult levels to get through. The varying difficulties make it suitable for ages 5 onwards.

There is a junior version of the game out there, but then that’s no fun for the adults!

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Unlock! Kids Detective Stories

Escape rooms but for little people! We’d never heard of the Unlock! series but it’s basically escape rooms in a box. This variation is it’s first kid friendly (6+) edition and finds everyone working together to solve puzzles, which were perfectly pitched for our 8 and 6 year old.

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Rubiks Cube

Rubiks Cubes can be hit or miss - either you’ll have a kid who will spend about 5 minutes on it before moving onto something else, or you’ll have a kid who becomes obsessed with it. On the plus side, if your kids don’t get on with it, you’ll probably get use out of it (I ended up learning via Youtube how to solve these things..).

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Magnetic Travel Tangram

Amazing for car journeys - this travel tangram is simple, challenging and so far, tantrum free.

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Transparent lock pick set

We stumbled across this lock picking set by accident and thought it might be fun to learn the mechanics of how locks work. The kids loved playing with this - it’s something about using real, little tools and watching the cylinders rotate that has them hooked. It needs adult supervision at first, but then with time, you’ll find the kids tinkering about with it on their own. With perseverance, they’ll be upgrading to real life breaking and entering in no time.

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Qwirkle

One of those rare games that is simple enough for young players to pick up (score points by building lines that have common shapes/colours) but has enough strategic depth to keep older ones (and adults) engaged.

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