I was raised on board games and am raising my seven children on them as well. The right games for kids are fun, fairly simple to learn, grow with them and encourage some kind of thinking. These the great kids games that I would recommend.

Memory. You can buy a lot of different versions or you can just use a couple of decks of playing cards or flash cards. The key is to not have too many cards for your child. Ten or so matches is good for a four year old, twenty to thirty is great for a nine year old and yes a nine year old will play it. My fifteen year old will play with her little siblings and they beat her sometimes.

Dominoes. The ones with colored dots are the best. Kids can play Cardinal Train before they can even count the dots by just matching the colors and it is a lot of fun. As they get older, they can learn about scoring and strategies and it is still a lot of fun, but when they are really young, it is just about who uses all their dominoes first.

Chutes and Ladders. It is better than Candy Land because when you have to go ahead or back it is not like when you get Queen Frostine on your first turn and the game is over in two minutes. It is also a great primer in actions and consequences. And it is fun.

Uno. Easy, fun, great for the entire family. Matching colors and numbers was never more fun and as your kids get older you can play Super Uno. The hardest part of this game is holding the cards but kids can play it when they are four or five with very little help.

Jenga or any of those stacking games. They are noisy when they fall but are a lot of fun and it is surprising how often the kids beat the adults in this one.

I would skip most games based on movies (Jumanji comes to mind) or TV shows or toys (My Little Pony) because the movie may be terrific but the games are usually very confusing and difficult to play. Games geared just for preschoolers get really old really fast and most games that require batteries are the same. There is a reason why the old classics are still on the shelves, it's because they are fun. So gather the family around the table and pull a great game out of the closet for an evening of old fashioned fun!

Learn more about this author, Al Louis.
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