Family Game Night

Family game night. This is a new tradition we've started lately, on Sundays after dinner.

It's so exciting that our kids are at ages that it's even possible to play a game all together. We own a lot of games, but usually in the past they’ve been mostly specific to one kid or the other (Don't Break the Ice with M, Chess with W, that sort of thing).

I like having a built-in time to play games, because the week gets busy (even as homeschoolers) with schoolwork and other activities and sometimes I feel like we don't play games often enough! Plus, we have a few games that only really work as intended with four or more players so it has been nice to give those some use.

We try to mix it up from week to week as far as what type of game(s) we play and who gets to pick. Some games are a little hard for M, but we can either adapt it for her, or let her play with one of us on a team. Some games are a little young for W, but he inevitably still gets into it and finds joy in hoping to beat the rest of us.

There are tons of benefits to playing games with kids, besides it being nice time as a family-- developing logic, strategy, thinking ahead and planning, organization, academic skills, communication, teamwork, motor skills (oh, card shuffling!). Even the simplest, least strategic games like Candy Land are good practice following a given set of rules and being a good sport about the outcomes. (Getting kicked back to start repeatedly in a game of Sorry this past weekend was almost more than M could handle, but she got through it. Side note: we learned a game of Sorry can go on a long while with four people playing...)

The kids each have their own individual favorites besides those mentioned below (W is in love with Stratego, for example). But here are some of our favorite games (so far) that work pretty well for all of us to play together.

Favorite Family Games

• Scrabble M can't spell all the words conventionally, but she comes up with ideas based on the letters she has and we help her the rest of the way.
• Memory We own various versions but we've always liked I Never Forget a Face, which has nice thick, sturdy cards and shows faces of children from different countries.  
• Go Fish/Old Maid
• Apples to Apples Junior, Kids Against Maturity, Kids Create Absurdity All three are variations where players choose a card to fill in a blank and one player picks what they find the funniest result. These games are good for laughs-- and have plenty of potty humor.
• Codenames We just have to check that M knows what all the words on the board mean before starting. We’re excited that having four players allows us to play this clever game.
• Qwirkle Simple concept using wooden tiles in six different colors and shapes, yet challenging for all ages, and one of the prettiest games to play.
• Pretty Pretty Princess It's nice to have some quick, silly games in the mix so it isn't all serious.
• Candy Land
• Sorry
• Pictionary Junior
• Charades
• Animal Trivia Challenge
• The World Game Geography game that is challenging, but you can somewhat adapt the level of challenge for each player so M essentially only needs to guess which continent a country is on, while W could try to identify the flag and other facts.
• Sequence for Kids We love the regular Sequence as well. But this version, that we've had since W was three, uses animals and is one of the best "junior" versions of a game in our opinion and we all enjoy it. 

What are your favorite family games?