Today I wanted to talk about kid's games. When I say talk about games for kids, I generally mean games for (really) young children, as - if exposed to boardgames at a young enough age - children are generally capable of playing most serious board games from ages 5 and up. From that age my son learnt to play The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game with me, before he could even read. He also played several other games, like Agricola (without the cards), Le Havre, Memoir '44, Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, Carcassonne, Arkham Horror and other 'crazy' games, even moving on to Mage Knight Board Game. He especially enjoyed the cooperative games where we'd play with the cards open and help each other out.
When he was approaching the age of 3, my son had been playing a number of games already which we have recently (over the last year) been playing a lot with my daughter, who's turning 3 in May. The main idea in playing with children that young is that they learn that in games you have turns, and that you wait for your turn. I teach them that they need to respect games, and that they should wash their hands before they play a game. Furthermore, I teach them they need to take a break from going crazy, running around, etc., and make a game part of a short period of time devoted to doing things together.
The first games we start with, before our kids turned 2, in fact, are Animal Upon Animal and Mein erstes Mitmach-Spiel. Animal upon Animal is a lovely building game that really works well. You can implement turns, but there is no absolute need for it, you can work on dexterity, but I often did the tougher animals for her, so as to reach a higher tower, and when the tower of animals falls over, which it's bound to do, you can have a big ol' laugh about it. Animal upon Animal has a number of different variants described in the rules, with no real definite rule set prescribed, but we always just played in one way: mix the tiles, draw a tile, name the animal, grab the animal, and place it on top of the previous animal. You win cooperatively if you manage to place all the animals on top of one another (and then you nudge the table so they all fall, and have a great big laugh about it), or the tower comes down sooner and then you lose. (And yes, I log all these plays too... - I/we've played 29 games with her.) The game has farm animals, laughter, well, what's not to like, right?
Mein erstes mitmach spiel, or, in English, My First Cooperative Boardgame, is another fantastic game to use to introduce your child to the marvelous world of boardgames. In this game you learn about turns, rolling the die, and achieving a communal goal. The game tells the story of a mouse, and the players have to build a tent for this mouse to sleep in. You do so by going round the game board (a circle of about 12 spots) and performing actions when you land in a specific space. In a blue action space you draw from a pile of tiles depicting animals. The player then has to make the sound of that animal. Our house rule is that we all need to make that sound (and this counts for every action!) - ever so much more fun! The yellow action space is connected to a physical activity, like forming a circle and singing a song - we always go for my daughter's (and before her my son's) favorite: Ring Around the Rosy. Finally, there's the Red action space which has you (and using our rules, everyone else as well) perform an activity like a finger play, like 'This Little Piggy...'. All in all the game is wildly popular with our kids during this age, because they get to sit around with their parents, hold hands, sing songs, do little dances, make strange sounds, it's all wonderful fun.
From there we move on to Orchard. The collecting of the fruit, and the rolling of the die, the taking turns, and winning (or losing to that bird stealing all our fruit) is a wonderful experience everytime. We generally play just with the two of us (which is, in general, the best way to play games with such little children, as waiting for your turn is something that stretches their patience thin), and we each take two baskets and fill them with the fruit. It's wonderfully pleasant to be playing a fruit picker, filling one's basket with fruit, and when other kids come over they always enjoy this one too (even though they're generally much older).
I've played other games as well, such as Gary Gouda (you roll a d4, move your mouse through a maze, and try to eat as much as possible), but this is a game (like most of the other games, actually), that is best played on the floor, so that the child can actually look into the maze and see what's going on. There are some other games I've played with my daughter (and son) as well, but they're mainly roll and move. Games like Das Schneemann Spiel. They are fine, I guess, but they don't bring the wild excitement of laughter of the other games mentioned.
Recently I got to thinking about our favorite kid's game, Gulo Gulo (by, among other designers, Wolfgang Kramer, and how our daughter ought to be able to play that soon. I checked my logs on BGG for my son, and found out we had played the game with him before he turned 3! I had to wait for a few weeks for the construction work to finish, but when I had my gaming room set up, I figured it was time for Gulo Gulo to make its entrance, though I dreaded it a little, as its a game of precision and concentration, and my daughter is much more boisterous than my pensive son. We started playing and within seconds my daughter's heart was won over. As all kids, she is great at playing this game, though she doesn't mind losing either. She loves it when the alarm stick falls out, laughing loudly, but boy is she concentrated and carefully, indeed meticulously precise when she needs to be. This was 9 days ago and I already have 16 games logged. We have played every single day I believe, often twice a day, and she is constantly asking for it. This is easily our favorite game, and it's fun for adults and children (as long as you don't get too frustrated by your children's nimble fingers winning out). The artwork and the theme is fantastic, and my daughter always has to laugh at the wolverines in their various poses.
Recently a new version of this hard-to-find, out-of-print game was released, Pharaoh's Gulo Gulo. Now, Gulo Gulo was labeled for children 5+, with us not even playing the game after my son turned 4 (we had played it that often!). But this new version has a few complications added to it and a theme that does not fit the age group at all (Egyptian, mummies, hieroglyphs, etc.). Logically, the age indication of the game has gone up - 7+ now. A ridiculous change that has caught a lot of flack on the forums already as well for this fantastic game. A pity, I have to say. Sure, you can play without the scarab beetles which add a little complexity to the game, and then the game is pretty much the same as the original, but the theme doesn't do it justice. A great pity, I think.
What games do you play with your children, or your nephews and nieces or what not?
When he was approaching the age of 3, my son had been playing a number of games already which we have recently (over the last year) been playing a lot with my daughter, who's turning 3 in May. The main idea in playing with children that young is that they learn that in games you have turns, and that you wait for your turn. I teach them that they need to respect games, and that they should wash their hands before they play a game. Furthermore, I teach them they need to take a break from going crazy, running around, etc., and make a game part of a short period of time devoted to doing things together.
The first games we start with, before our kids turned 2, in fact, are Animal Upon Animal and Mein erstes Mitmach-Spiel. Animal upon Animal is a lovely building game that really works well. You can implement turns, but there is no absolute need for it, you can work on dexterity, but I often did the tougher animals for her, so as to reach a higher tower, and when the tower of animals falls over, which it's bound to do, you can have a big ol' laugh about it. Animal upon Animal has a number of different variants described in the rules, with no real definite rule set prescribed, but we always just played in one way: mix the tiles, draw a tile, name the animal, grab the animal, and place it on top of the previous animal. You win cooperatively if you manage to place all the animals on top of one another (and then you nudge the table so they all fall, and have a great big laugh about it), or the tower comes down sooner and then you lose. (And yes, I log all these plays too... - I/we've played 29 games with her.) The game has farm animals, laughter, well, what's not to like, right?
Mein erstes mitmach spiel, or, in English, My First Cooperative Boardgame, is another fantastic game to use to introduce your child to the marvelous world of boardgames. In this game you learn about turns, rolling the die, and achieving a communal goal. The game tells the story of a mouse, and the players have to build a tent for this mouse to sleep in. You do so by going round the game board (a circle of about 12 spots) and performing actions when you land in a specific space. In a blue action space you draw from a pile of tiles depicting animals. The player then has to make the sound of that animal. Our house rule is that we all need to make that sound (and this counts for every action!) - ever so much more fun! The yellow action space is connected to a physical activity, like forming a circle and singing a song - we always go for my daughter's (and before her my son's) favorite: Ring Around the Rosy. Finally, there's the Red action space which has you (and using our rules, everyone else as well) perform an activity like a finger play, like 'This Little Piggy...'. All in all the game is wildly popular with our kids during this age, because they get to sit around with their parents, hold hands, sing songs, do little dances, make strange sounds, it's all wonderful fun.
From there we move on to Orchard. The collecting of the fruit, and the rolling of the die, the taking turns, and winning (or losing to that bird stealing all our fruit) is a wonderful experience everytime. We generally play just with the two of us (which is, in general, the best way to play games with such little children, as waiting for your turn is something that stretches their patience thin), and we each take two baskets and fill them with the fruit. It's wonderfully pleasant to be playing a fruit picker, filling one's basket with fruit, and when other kids come over they always enjoy this one too (even though they're generally much older).
I've played other games as well, such as Gary Gouda (you roll a d4, move your mouse through a maze, and try to eat as much as possible), but this is a game (like most of the other games, actually), that is best played on the floor, so that the child can actually look into the maze and see what's going on. There are some other games I've played with my daughter (and son) as well, but they're mainly roll and move. Games like Das Schneemann Spiel. They are fine, I guess, but they don't bring the wild excitement of laughter of the other games mentioned.
Recently I got to thinking about our favorite kid's game, Gulo Gulo (by, among other designers, Wolfgang Kramer, and how our daughter ought to be able to play that soon. I checked my logs on BGG for my son, and found out we had played the game with him before he turned 3! I had to wait for a few weeks for the construction work to finish, but when I had my gaming room set up, I figured it was time for Gulo Gulo to make its entrance, though I dreaded it a little, as its a game of precision and concentration, and my daughter is much more boisterous than my pensive son. We started playing and within seconds my daughter's heart was won over. As all kids, she is great at playing this game, though she doesn't mind losing either. She loves it when the alarm stick falls out, laughing loudly, but boy is she concentrated and carefully, indeed meticulously precise when she needs to be. This was 9 days ago and I already have 16 games logged. We have played every single day I believe, often twice a day, and she is constantly asking for it. This is easily our favorite game, and it's fun for adults and children (as long as you don't get too frustrated by your children's nimble fingers winning out). The artwork and the theme is fantastic, and my daughter always has to laugh at the wolverines in their various poses.
Recently a new version of this hard-to-find, out-of-print game was released, Pharaoh's Gulo Gulo. Now, Gulo Gulo was labeled for children 5+, with us not even playing the game after my son turned 4 (we had played it that often!). But this new version has a few complications added to it and a theme that does not fit the age group at all (Egyptian, mummies, hieroglyphs, etc.). Logically, the age indication of the game has gone up - 7+ now. A ridiculous change that has caught a lot of flack on the forums already as well for this fantastic game. A pity, I have to say. Sure, you can play without the scarab beetles which add a little complexity to the game, and then the game is pretty much the same as the original, but the theme doesn't do it justice. A great pity, I think.
What games do you play with your children, or your nephews and nieces or what not?