by Alissa King

Created on: February 03, 2007   Last Updated: April 03, 2007

Family bonding time around a board game is becoming a rare occurrence as living rooms become more and more dominated by television, video games and movies. A family that is normally plugged into these forms of recreation will usually look outward, toward nature and travel adventures, when they find themselves tired of the daily routine. Reintroducing your family to the fun and interaction of board games may be a way to take back your evenings from the pervading technology. Here are my recommendations for the best family board games.

If you have young children, 'Candy Land', 'Chutes and Ladders' and 'Hi-Ho! Cherry-O' are great starting points for introducing them to the concept of board games. All three of these games are simple to learn and can help a child develop basic skills. Candy Land relies on color matching, and can be played by very young children. The bright colors and vivid characters help to draw the child's imagination in. Hi-Ho Cherry-O is a counting game, for four years and older. Small plastic cherries are used in this game, so children should not play if they are apt to swallow the small game pieces.

If you have five to eight year olds, try graduating to 'Pictionary Jr.', 'Uncle Wiggily' and 'Memory'. I loved the Memory game from the time I was five until I was around 13. The concept is very simple, you lay a bunch of cards face down that all have pictures on one side. There are two of each picture so each card has a 'match'. Taking turns with the other players, you pay attention to each cards that is turned up and try to find matches by remembering where specific cards are located. This game helps build memorization skills, and it is simple to learn how to play. There are many different versions of the game, with different types of pictures to choose from.

Once your children are older, a whole world of board games opens up. Clue is a classic, and fun to play. Boggle is a great vocabulary building game, as is Scrabble. I really like the game 'Balderdash'. In this game, when it is your turn, you select a card with strange words and their definitions on it. You choose a word from the card, and everyone around the table writes down their definition on a piece of paper. The person with the card writes the correct definition. All the papers are passed to the card drawer, and he goes through to see if anyone's definition is correct. If so, that person's paper is taken out, and they are awarded points. The dasher then reads all the other definitions and players try to guess which is the true definition. A hint: Often the real definition is the strangest of all.

Two games that I have not mentioned yet are chess and Monopoly. Chess is not really a family board game, because it is only played by two people at a time. Chess is a great game, and worth teaching to children as it stimulates their problem solving ability. Monopoly is a very fun game. Everyone loves monopoly, and everyone's family ends up with a little empire builder who wins most of the time. I was not the empire builder in my family, so I'll leave the praises of this game to more successful capitalists. Whatever you choose to play with your family, enjoy the time together and have fun.

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