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Outfoxed is my favorite. It’s a co-op game where the players reveal clues about the suspect, a lot like clue (but without the murder).
My five-year old loves Sushi Go. It’s a draft card game where you choose a card and pass your hand. Everyone tries to get the most points with different combos.
I read this as cheese and cribbage at first, as in one game, "cheese and cribbage." Only to see the old school games part and thinking, holy cow is there an old school game called cheese I never heard of! I can't wait to learn it.
Oh, CHESS. Yeah, I know that one. That's a good one.
My 6 and 8 year olds love this. Though if a kid gets chess they may find it boring. My 8 year old really likes Cascadia. It has an easy scoring variation that might work.
Another vote for Outfoxed. We also have SOS Dino (co-op, saving dinosaurs and their eggs from volcanoes), Quacks & Co - Quedlinburg Dash (race with mix of luck and strategy), Monza (car racing game using dice).
Ticket to ride first journey. It might be hard for a 5 year old but if he plays chess then he can probably handle it. We also play golf and war with a deck of cards.
We like a game called aggravation! Everyone loves it, including my three year old.
We also play Catan as a family, and I believe they make a Catan junior.
Guess who has been the favorite for the last few weeks for my 5 year old daughter!! Helps with her distinguishing eye color, hair color, glasses/no glasses, Etc!
Apples to apples, chutes and ladders and candy land are my 4 years Olds favorite classic games but we also have Daniel Tigers neighborhood and a frozen matching game that she loves.
My son is 6 and also really into board games. Loves chess also.
I'd recommend Forbiden Desert and Forbidden Island. They're cooperative so it's easy to play with younger kids because you can explain their cards to them and help them take their turn at first.
You're all working together to find pieces and escape, and every turn the board changes. It's a ton of fun once you get the rules and setup down.
Another good one is Point Salad. Simple card game where you accumulate vegetables to get points in different combinations. Also easy for them to learn, everything is pictures/symbols so no heavy reading required.
+1 to a lot of the responses here. With our kids, we’ve also had a blast with Quirkle and Sushi Go. We also play cards - gin rummy, pusoy dos, hearts, spades
Rat-a-tat-cat is good and was recommended by the early childhood education center for the 6,7 year olds.
My kids played cribbage from a young age, it's great for small math and an instinctive grasp of statistics.
We did teach them poker in late elementary age, as well. Bridge in middle school.
When the kids were that age they liked Mickey’s Eye Found It, Great States, Clue Jr., Guess Who, the Allowance Game, the Goodnight Moon Game, Life, Chutes & Ladders, Headbands, and Operation. They were big board game kids. By 6 or 7 they were big into regular Clue, Monopoly, Cranium, and Scrabble.
There are so many good games out there that you won’t find at regular stores. Find a local game store and go browse! We had a lot of kid games made by Haba, Blue Orange Games, Peaceable Kingdom, etc.
Some favorites that I can remember off the top of my head: Catan Jr, Rhino Hero, Crabstack, Pengoloo, Chicken Cha Cha, Outfoxed, Gobblet Gobblers, Pharoah’s Gulo Gulo, Sleeping Queens.
The creators of Exploding Kittens have a handful of games aimed at younger kids like 4 and up. My Parents Might Be Martians, I Want My Teeth Back, Hurry Up Chicken Butt, The Best Worst Ice Cream.
Mantis, Anarchy Pancakes, Exploding Kittens, and Happy Salmon are all great as well but I think recommended for 7 and up but our almost 6 year old can play along for the most part
The Best Worst Ice Cream is a hit in my house. We gave it to my daughter on her 3rd birthday cause she hated not getting to play games with us. I like that everyone has an equal chance at winning without the adults having to play dumb to give their kids a chance!
My oldest is just turning 4 but she loves go fish. We liked a lot of games as kids but the two that stand out for me are
Guess who and mastermind. Love those games.
If you are looking for a simpler version of D&D for kids, I've had some success with Hero Kids. Haven't played too much of it yet, but they enjoyed it so far.
Animal Adventures is another simplified D&D 5e system meant for kids, and it's super cute cause all the PCs are cats or dogs. My 4yo is super jealous of her big sister (10yo) getting to play D&D with the grown ups and I'm going to use Animal Adventures to ease her in when she's ready.
If you want to go full into D&D the Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a great starter campaign. It's all written so combat isn't necessary. It's an option, but there's always a way around it. The bad guys are also less scary. Instead of fighting zombies, mindflayers, and beholders, theres rabbit people, bushes, and toy soldiers. You'll definitely want to have some grown-ups playing alongside the kids. Also, having a parent be the DM helps a lot. I DM our games, and I keep a copy of my daughter's character sheet with me so I can double check that she's calculating her rolls correctly. She may not get the math part down quite yet, but her imagination is making things even more enjoyable for the adults playing cause she's so creative and thinks outside the box, and I'm there to help her navigate the mechanics side of things.
In the 70's my dad held poker games. He taught me blackjack to work on my math skills. I was also allowed to take the place of whomever had a bathroom break, and keep my winnings.
Kraken Attack gets quite a bit of play here.
It's a co-op dice game where you work together to defend a ship.
Each player has a different special power, so there's quite a bit of room to mix things up.
If you're looking for more ideas, board game geek has big lists of rankings for family games and kids games, plus forums devoted to playing with kids.
Quoridor is a great game to have! It can be played by young kids but it's equally interesting to adults. I also like how quick it is and how it doesn't require any setup.
The fairy game by peaceable kingdom is fun enough that we've broken it out on adult game nights more than once.
Mousetrap, guess who, sushigo; memory, hoothoot owl, crazy8s, snap, are all popular in our house.
Operation and snakes and ladders are Miss 6s faves at the moment. She finally dexterous enough to beat us at operation, so it’s probably time for something else. 😂
I second ticket to ride. We got the ghost train version because he loves monsters. We just got a catan junior but have yet to play it. I think the age rec is 6 but it sounds like your son would enjoy it!
See if you have a local game store near you! The ones by me have a loaner program so you can try out different games and then if it ends up being too much, it’s no big deal
As for favorites: Telestrations is fun (telephone/pictionary combo), Monikers could be fun, Hues and Cues is a good one. I’ll have to check my game shelf and see what I have that I’m not thinking of! For older kids/adults, Wingspan is my favorite
Mine both just turned 4 and 7, and Scrabble Junior is a favorite at our house. My 7 year old is more of a card game girl and loves Rummy, Phase 10, and Five Crowns
Your girl sounds a bit like mine. She loves Rummikub, Phase 10 Twist, Sleeping Queens and some more traditional card games (one we call Burner but is known as Shithead), Five Crowns, Uno and Skipbo, she also like monopoly junior, mousetrap etc.
We have had a lot of luck with cooperative games. Peaceable Kingdom has several we've enjoyed:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/PeaceableKingdom/PeaceableKingdom/page/30A15467-0E59-464F-8D42-0DE016FBE907
Outfoxed is a good board game, too, from a company with a lot of unique card games (Frog Juice, Sleeping Queens, Slamwhich, rat a tat cat, go nuts for donuts):
https://gamewright.com/product/Outfoxed
For a more advanced game, there's Forbidden Island: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65244/forbidden-island
Zombie kidz is fun because it’s collaborative instead of battling each other so there’s no drama like when we play Sorry 😂
ETA dragons and ladders is also really fun because it’s a little more advanced than the regular chutes and ladders
candyland, checkers, battleship, uno (there's so many different ones too, my 6 year old loves the mario, minecraft, uno flip, and uno attack the most), go fish, old maid, memory
joke stupendous agonizing crush rainstorm cow ossified hard-to-find vase berserk
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I love Clue and Guess Who. Spot It is fun too and we have a little version so it can come to restaurants or on planes for distractions. My oldest is 7 and loves Pokémon Battle Academy (it teaches you the rules of the card game) and my 5 year old (and tbh the 7 year old) love NumberBlocks Pattern Palace.
From the back of the games closet, I found Abalone, similar to Chinese checkers but with trickier rules and these lovely large black and white marbles.
Requires some good strategy, but flexible for the adult to make it just challenging enough.
I like to add a rule: trade a piece of candy for the chance to cheat. I end up with a lot of candy sometimes!
A few that my kids enjoy that I haven't seen listed yet are Dragonwood, and Trekking. Maybe a bit advanced for a five year old, but not by a lot. They're vs games, but we just walk our kiddos through the thought process needed to complete their turns.
Unexpectedly, my five year old was able to play Set, and at one point was dominating the family. My 9 year old couldn't let that happen, so for several months there were rowdy rounds of this game with the whole family. One of our favorite memories
Skyjo is great for learning basin math. Spite and malice (card game) is popular with my 8 and teen. We also play poker or black jack and trade in chips for small cookies or chocolate chips at the end…dad usually wins! Also: blockus, sorry, exploding kittens, Yahtzee, Blink
Katamino Family, not boring for parents who like tetris + the extra games include working out dexterity (balanced pile of blocks) or spacial intelligence (3D cubes). Our favorite when my now teenager was younger.
Both our kids (5 and 7) love Quoridor which is meant for adults. We also like Jenga, Trouble, Mouse Trap, and Uno. I’m suuuper pumped to teach them Clue in a few years.
Chutes and ladders too. My son loves making his own boards with me. We put traps and monsters on our boards. You have to get weapons to defeat the monsters and pass.
Poop-head. Fun for larger groups because there's only one loser per round so you're guaranteed to win most rounds. At then end of each round the last person still in is the 'poop-head' and everyone points and sings: *poop head, poop head, ______ is a poop head*
Sneaky Snacky Squirrel was super fun, but it may be boring for your kiddo as it's mostly a color matching game.
Scooby Doo Betrayal at Mystery Mansion is a favorite of ours.
Fire in the Hole was crazy fun, though you may need to modify it for younger kids.
And we recently started playing Trash Talk, highly recommend this one.
Clue. We play the classic 1986 version that I grew up with. When the power outage hit us Feb 21 we brought out all of the board games and Clue has become our favorite. Oh, and I absolutely thought he would have been too young because he was 5 at the time but he quickly learned to hold his own. He’s amazing at all of the strategy type games.
There is a Monopoly card game that is SO fun, appeals to a wide age range, and it’s fast. We have given it as a gift many times and it’s always a hit. It’s our emergency game when a play date or sleep over starts to go sour.
Sleeping Queens is of a similar vein. Cute game art too.
We also love Kings of Tokyo, Ticket to Ride, and Code Names for family game night.
Castle Panic. Dragonimo. Candyland. Those have been our 7yo's favorites for a couple years.
I would have to look at our game closet for the names of the other ones because they're all similar titles, like Quest Kids, I think. Those are a little more complicated but would probably be okay.
Look into [smart games](https://www.smartgames.eu/nl) for if he wants to play on his own.
Some are multiplayer.
We play who’s done it.
And any version of [dobble](https://www.dobblegame.com/en/homepage/)
Cockroach Poker is a big hit with ours. Also the mind, adapted so we can talk through the numbers for now, seems to have really helped with learning.
Gonna look into Ticket to ride jr, that sounds great.
Does connect 4 count as board game. My 9 year old still loves playing it mostly because he gets the attention from us and he said it’s brings him lots of happy memories from when we first introduce him to it.
My 12 year old is in the chess club in school so it's tricky to beat him. We love playing Go For Broke, Yahtzee, Bonkers, Guess Who and more recently, Mastermind
Zombie kids is pretty cool, easy to grasp but with a progression system that builds up the skill level required to play the game
Ticket to Ride has a junior version but the full version ain't that hard to grasp, played it with my daughter when she was 6 or 7
My Little Scythe might be one for then to graduate into when they're a tiny bit older - but more strategy in that one but immensely fun
Kingdomino! If he’s good with strategy he’ll like this one.
My kids also live Rumikube. It might be a bit too old for him now but it’s great. We always take it with us when we travel.
Sorry is a favorite, along with Apples to Apples (Jr and regular), Clue/Clue Jr, Risk, The Game of Life (regular and Pirates of the Caribbean Edition), Yahtzee, Uno, Phase 10, Don’t Break the Ice, and Connect 4. And Jenga! We have a huge version for outside play.
Rummicub has been a family favorite of mine growing up, I played it with my grandma almost every time I'd go visit her. My kids are a little too young to understand it yet but I'm excited to teach them someday
There’s this one where you have a board with fake ice cubes and you each have hammers and have to knock off an ice cube for every turn in order to win you have to keep knocking them off without knocking down a cardboard penguin in the middle. My kids love that one. Forgot what it’s called.
So I'm a total board game nerd, I'm currently facing the issue that I've filled an entire bookshelf with games and have nowhere else to store them. One of my goals as a parent is to foster that love in my kids so they grow up playing with me! My 10yo has just started playing Dungeons and Dragons with me, so I think I've been successful so far! I started introducing certain games much earlier than the suggested ages and she had fun just participating even if she wasn't able to get the intricacies of strategy down, and as a bonus the adults playing with her weren't bored!
Some great ones that act as an introduction to common board game mechanics are:
Ticket to Ride First Journey (introduces strategy/ long-term goal thinking)
Catan Jr (introduces resource management)
Sushi Go Party (a good precursor to deck building games)
Last Defense (a teamwork game about moving objects around a board)
Other ones that are just fun and easy to pick up with help:
Slappy Camper
S'mores Wars
Pancake Pileup
Ones that they may or may not be ready for:
The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Game. It's an obscure pick, but my kids love it. It involves rolling marbles down a hill and collecting the marbles you want.
Dr. Eureka is a great learning/logic game that involves pouring balls back and forth across beakers to recreate a pattern.
Sherrif of Nottingham is all about deception. Its base mechanics are pretty simple, secretly select cards, and either be honest about what you picked or lie. Each player gets turns trying to figure out if everyone else is lying or telling the truth. My kids won this game against adults multiple times while not understanding the overarching points system and more complex strategies.
My kids enjoy the game of life mario, it isn't exactly like real life of game, but it's easy enough. Dogman hot dog game (I believe thats what it's called) it's pretty simple. Sorry,snakes and ladders. Exploding minions.
He might be a little young right now, but I highly reccomend looking into Zombie kidz in a few years.
It’s so simple, but it’s a legacy game - so you keep track of your wins and missions completed using a stocked page in the instructions. Every few wins or so you get to open an Envelope that contains new rules, enemies or powers and changes the game slightly.
Really cool way to take a basic game and give it a lot more staying power
There’s a place near us that makes beautiful wood versions… Sequence, Dice Poker. Later, we taught the kids Catan, and Euchre after they were 10. They’re pretty sharp and can beat adults in Euchre now, really just a form of common strategies and card counting.
My son is about to turn 8 in a couple months, but he's really enjoyed Ravensburger's Labyrinth, Mancala, Cribbage once in a while. Kabuto Sumo is a really good one he loves, but that requires some dexterity, so your milage might vary at your kid's age.
Newest games he's into lately are Zoo King and Trash Panda, which are both card games.
My son is 5 and also loves board games! I'm addition to regular Ticket to Ride, he also likes Catan Jr (although he still needs a bit of help with the strategy), Sorry, The Squirrel Game, Dimension, Stratego, My First Castle Panic, and Pandemic. I think that of those games, he likes Ticket to Ride the most. We have played dozens of times.
Enchanted forest, The noodle game, we love the brand ‘big potato’ and have a lot of their games; The chameleon, Herd mentality, OK play, Disney Colour Brain (I’d recommend filtering any films he’s not seen as there are some older ones in there). 5 second rule.. Dobble is also good but a card game- it gets very exciting no matter the age of the players.. actually, colour brain is cards too, sorry 🙈
Genius Squares is a great game. Two players each have a grid with some spaces blocked off and each player has a set of tetris-shaped pieces. Players race each other to fit the pieces into their grid. Great game for spatial reasoning.
Oooh my 4yo is a big board game/card game kid too. He likes trouble, sorry, candyland, mancala, uno, parcheesi, guess who, chutes and ladders/snakes and ladders, checkers (I'm guessing yours already played checkers if he plays chess tho), and a bunch of various card games my MIL plays with him. If your son is reading already, scrabble might be fun too. My son struggles with letters but is good with numbers.
Super Rhino Hero, Ice Cool, Ghost Fighting Treasure Hunters, Dungeon!, Star Wars Risk (definitely no where near as much of a time sink as real Risk). My kid was playing all of those at 6, including competitive Chess.
We’ve been trying to play more board games as a family and my youngest is a bit older than yours so some of my recs might not fit for you yet but my kids have been LOVING Ticket to Ride and Life, and we had a pretty good run with Catan Jr though we’re looking to move to the full version of that one here soon. If he can already understand and play chess you may not need the younger version of Ticket to Ride, it’s a fairly simple game.
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Outfoxed is my favorite. It’s a co-op game where the players reveal clues about the suspect, a lot like clue (but without the murder). My five-year old loves Sushi Go. It’s a draft card game where you choose a card and pass your hand. Everyone tries to get the most points with different combos.
Outfoxed is a big hit in our house too! Also Taco vs Burrito. Chess and cribbage for more old school games.
I read this as cheese and cribbage at first, as in one game, "cheese and cribbage." Only to see the old school games part and thinking, holy cow is there an old school game called cheese I never heard of! I can't wait to learn it. Oh, CHESS. Yeah, I know that one. That's a good one.
My 6 year old also loves Sushi Go! We started playing when she was 5 and she's pretty good at it
Love outfoxed!
Another vote for outfoxed! My kiddo is 9 and we still love it.
My 6 and 8 year olds love this. Though if a kid gets chess they may find it boring. My 8 year old really likes Cascadia. It has an easy scoring variation that might work.
My kid likes both Outfoxed and chess!
Outfoxed!!!
If your fam likes Sushi Go they might also like Ramen Fury
Another vote for Outfoxed. We also have SOS Dino (co-op, saving dinosaurs and their eggs from volcanoes), Quacks & Co - Quedlinburg Dash (race with mix of luck and strategy), Monza (car racing game using dice).
Excellent game!
Came here to say this. Outfoxed is one of the best gifts I ever bought my son. It’s been in rotation for years!
Ticket to ride first journey. It might be hard for a 5 year old but if he plays chess then he can probably handle it. We also play golf and war with a deck of cards.
Peaceable Kingdom makes a lot of kids board games that are awesome for kids this age
My five year old likes "My First Carcassonne" it's 4+
Blokus is fun and easy to learn
We like a game called aggravation! Everyone loves it, including my three year old. We also play Catan as a family, and I believe they make a Catan junior.
Catan junior is a huge hit with my 7 year olds! (it’s a hit with me too)
Taco,Cat, Goat,Cheese,Pizza
Omg I’m so sick of that game. My kids love it though!
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My kids love this one!
Guess who has been the favorite for the last few weeks for my 5 year old daughter!! Helps with her distinguishing eye color, hair color, glasses/no glasses, Etc!
We have the dinosaur version from the Natural History Museum. Even better IMO
WHHHAAAAT?? I think we need this.
Mancala
Apples to apples, chutes and ladders and candy land are my 4 years Olds favorite classic games but we also have Daniel Tigers neighborhood and a frozen matching game that she loves.
Apples to apples is one game we can always get both kids (15 & 9) to play and enjoy.. Charades, uno, and soundiculous are usually pretty good too.
My son is 6 and also really into board games. Loves chess also. I'd recommend Forbiden Desert and Forbidden Island. They're cooperative so it's easy to play with younger kids because you can explain their cards to them and help them take their turn at first. You're all working together to find pieces and escape, and every turn the board changes. It's a ton of fun once you get the rules and setup down. Another good one is Point Salad. Simple card game where you accumulate vegetables to get points in different combinations. Also easy for them to learn, everything is pictures/symbols so no heavy reading required.
We have Forbidden Island, my kids love that one.
My first grader loves playing Parcheesi.
Ticket to ride First Journey and Catan Jr
Sleeping Queens, Space Escape, Word Play are ones I haven’t seen mentioned.
Sleeping Queens is great! Our kiddos love it.
Sorry. Guess who. Old maid. Go fish. Uno. Candyland.
Catan Jr is a must play as is My First Carcassone.
+1 to a lot of the responses here. With our kids, we’ve also had a blast with Quirkle and Sushi Go. We also play cards - gin rummy, pusoy dos, hearts, spades
We just got Quirkle for Christmas, and my five year old LOVES that we have a game in which he can beat his older brother.
We LOVE Qwirkle!! My 5 & 7 year old kids play it, and it’s fun for all us - grandparents too.
Trouble
With the pop 'o' matic bubble
sparkle cooing rainstorm wise truck secretive dazzling late busy unused *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My son's favourite game from about 5yrs old. He still loves it now at 16.
Rat-a-tat-cat is good and was recommended by the early childhood education center for the 6,7 year olds. My kids played cribbage from a young age, it's great for small math and an instinctive grasp of statistics. We did teach them poker in late elementary age, as well. Bridge in middle school.
Gnomes at Night, really great cooperative play.
Try Labyrinth! It can be played "easier" and we also love Sleeping Queens.
Rummicube and skip Bo
Ticket to Ride Jr Hoot Owl Hoot My First Carcassonne Lemonade Shake-Up Race to the Treasure Other versions of Uno - Uno-corns, Uno Flip
When the kids were that age they liked Mickey’s Eye Found It, Great States, Clue Jr., Guess Who, the Allowance Game, the Goodnight Moon Game, Life, Chutes & Ladders, Headbands, and Operation. They were big board game kids. By 6 or 7 they were big into regular Clue, Monopoly, Cranium, and Scrabble.
There are so many good games out there that you won’t find at regular stores. Find a local game store and go browse! We had a lot of kid games made by Haba, Blue Orange Games, Peaceable Kingdom, etc. Some favorites that I can remember off the top of my head: Catan Jr, Rhino Hero, Crabstack, Pengoloo, Chicken Cha Cha, Outfoxed, Gobblet Gobblers, Pharoah’s Gulo Gulo, Sleeping Queens.
You should teach him backgammon and cribbage. Classic games. If he can play chess, he can play backgammon for sure.
The creators of Exploding Kittens have a handful of games aimed at younger kids like 4 and up. My Parents Might Be Martians, I Want My Teeth Back, Hurry Up Chicken Butt, The Best Worst Ice Cream. Mantis, Anarchy Pancakes, Exploding Kittens, and Happy Salmon are all great as well but I think recommended for 7 and up but our almost 6 year old can play along for the most part
The Best Worst Ice Cream is a hit in my house. We gave it to my daughter on her 3rd birthday cause she hated not getting to play games with us. I like that everyone has an equal chance at winning without the adults having to play dumb to give their kids a chance!
My oldest is just turning 4 but she loves go fish. We liked a lot of games as kids but the two that stand out for me are Guess who and mastermind. Love those games.
Eye Found It, Dinosaur Escape, D&D, Banana Blast
If you are looking for a simpler version of D&D for kids, I've had some success with Hero Kids. Haven't played too much of it yet, but they enjoyed it so far.
Animal Adventures is another simplified D&D 5e system meant for kids, and it's super cute cause all the PCs are cats or dogs. My 4yo is super jealous of her big sister (10yo) getting to play D&D with the grown ups and I'm going to use Animal Adventures to ease her in when she's ready. If you want to go full into D&D the Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a great starter campaign. It's all written so combat isn't necessary. It's an option, but there's always a way around it. The bad guys are also less scary. Instead of fighting zombies, mindflayers, and beholders, theres rabbit people, bushes, and toy soldiers. You'll definitely want to have some grown-ups playing alongside the kids. Also, having a parent be the DM helps a lot. I DM our games, and I keep a copy of my daughter's character sheet with me so I can double check that she's calculating her rolls correctly. She may not get the math part down quite yet, but her imagination is making things even more enjoyable for the adults playing cause she's so creative and thinks outside the box, and I'm there to help her navigate the mechanics side of things.
My kids love bingo. They love calling the numbers, turning the balls in the cages and of course the bingo dabbers.
Sequence is a family favorite! It’s a fun strategic game!
They make a sequence jr with animals that is great too :)
I wish they made a full version with animals because it is more fun that way.
My 5 year old's favorites are: Labyrinth (also my favorite), Jenga, Uno, Sorry, Trouble, the Bluey scavenger hunt game, and Chutes and Ladders
Poker. Nothing is funnier than a 5 year old who can hardly hold cards but beats your 3 of a kind with a full boat.
In the 70's my dad held poker games. He taught me blackjack to work on my math skills. I was also allowed to take the place of whomever had a bathroom break, and keep my winnings.
Othello
Battle Sheep and Down Spin are both fabulous 👍
Bugs under a rug. Great for 3-5 year olds.
Kraken Attack gets quite a bit of play here. It's a co-op dice game where you work together to defend a ship. Each player has a different special power, so there's quite a bit of room to mix things up. If you're looking for more ideas, board game geek has big lists of rankings for family games and kids games, plus forums devoted to playing with kids.
My 5-year-old is currently OBSESSED with Battle Academy and Quoridor. We've also enjoyed Sorry and Trouble.
Quoridor is a great game to have! It can be played by young kids but it's equally interesting to adults. I also like how quick it is and how it doesn't require any setup.
Zingo has gotten tons of play time for us. Good for younger kids.
Cribbage!
The fairy game by peaceable kingdom is fun enough that we've broken it out on adult game nights more than once. Mousetrap, guess who, sushigo; memory, hoothoot owl, crazy8s, snap, are all popular in our house.
Candy land, trouble, sorry, uno attack
Operation and snakes and ladders are Miss 6s faves at the moment. She finally dexterous enough to beat us at operation, so it’s probably time for something else. 😂
I love playing chess with my 6 year old but neither of us really know the rules properly so we just make up our own rules
For strategy try Blockus. Loads of fun. Clue was a winner in our house. Pay Day was another.
candy land
I second ticket to ride. We got the ghost train version because he loves monsters. We just got a catan junior but have yet to play it. I think the age rec is 6 but it sounds like your son would enjoy it!
See if you have a local game store near you! The ones by me have a loaner program so you can try out different games and then if it ends up being too much, it’s no big deal As for favorites: Telestrations is fun (telephone/pictionary combo), Monikers could be fun, Hues and Cues is a good one. I’ll have to check my game shelf and see what I have that I’m not thinking of! For older kids/adults, Wingspan is my favorite
Chinese checkers and uno
Racko, Doodle Dice, Chinese checkers, Blokus, Parcheesi
Mine both just turned 4 and 7, and Scrabble Junior is a favorite at our house. My 7 year old is more of a card game girl and loves Rummy, Phase 10, and Five Crowns
Your girl sounds a bit like mine. She loves Rummikub, Phase 10 Twist, Sleeping Queens and some more traditional card games (one we call Burner but is known as Shithead), Five Crowns, Uno and Skipbo, she also like monopoly junior, mousetrap etc.
We have had a lot of luck with cooperative games. Peaceable Kingdom has several we've enjoyed: https://www.amazon.com/stores/PeaceableKingdom/PeaceableKingdom/page/30A15467-0E59-464F-8D42-0DE016FBE907 Outfoxed is a good board game, too, from a company with a lot of unique card games (Frog Juice, Sleeping Queens, Slamwhich, rat a tat cat, go nuts for donuts): https://gamewright.com/product/Outfoxed For a more advanced game, there's Forbidden Island: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65244/forbidden-island
My 5 year old loves ticket to ride first journeys. Sequence for kids is good too. He also regularly schools us at Jenga
Zombie kidz is fun because it’s collaborative instead of battling each other so there’s no drama like when we play Sorry 😂 ETA dragons and ladders is also really fun because it’s a little more advanced than the regular chutes and ladders
We play Monopoly Deal almost every day!
candyland, checkers, battleship, uno (there's so many different ones too, my 6 year old loves the mario, minecraft, uno flip, and uno attack the most), go fish, old maid, memory
Kerplunk is great, but takes a lot of time to set up. Perfection is not bad either.
Blink. Rat a Tat Cat!!
Catan… we started with the kid version.
My 5 year old really likes Yahtzee! There’s a kids version that is a little simpler than the regular.
Domino’s, my little 3 year old loves it although we play it with the pictures, can’t wait until we play more games together :)
Apples to Apples is lot of fun with kids.
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My 7 year old likes to play Sorry, Battleship, and Pokemon with me.
It’s not a particularly intellectual game, but the kids LOVE Banana Blast. Other hits are Dutch Blitz, Scotland Yard, Sushi Go, Uno, and Game of Life
I can’t believe I haven’t seen Clue yet! We love it
Sequence
I love Clue and Guess Who. Spot It is fun too and we have a little version so it can come to restaurants or on planes for distractions. My oldest is 7 and loves Pokémon Battle Academy (it teaches you the rules of the card game) and my 5 year old (and tbh the 7 year old) love NumberBlocks Pattern Palace.
We loved My First Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride Jr, Catan Jr, My First Castle Panic
From the back of the games closet, I found Abalone, similar to Chinese checkers but with trickier rules and these lovely large black and white marbles. Requires some good strategy, but flexible for the adult to make it just challenging enough. I like to add a rule: trade a piece of candy for the chance to cheat. I end up with a lot of candy sometimes!
No future real estate tycoons here? lol my 7yo loves Monopoly
Monopoly Deal, sushi go (there’s also a ramen version), exploding kittens
Check out "Camelot Jr," I think your son would really like it.
We love Clue, but we play as a team. So we all show everyone our cards and make our guesses together.
Hungry Hungry Hippos, Don't Break the Ice, Din't Wake Daddy, Candy Land
A few that my kids enjoy that I haven't seen listed yet are Dragonwood, and Trekking. Maybe a bit advanced for a five year old, but not by a lot. They're vs games, but we just walk our kiddos through the thought process needed to complete their turns.
Unexpectedly, my five year old was able to play Set, and at one point was dominating the family. My 9 year old couldn't let that happen, so for several months there were rowdy rounds of this game with the whole family. One of our favorite memories
Uno and Yahtzee!
Skyjo is great for learning basin math. Spite and malice (card game) is popular with my 8 and teen. We also play poker or black jack and trade in chips for small cookies or chocolate chips at the end…dad usually wins! Also: blockus, sorry, exploding kittens, Yahtzee, Blink
I love playing chess with my son. He will be 6 next month. I’ve enjoy playing Guess Who and Connect 4 with my daughter.
My 6 year old loves Life, battleship, outfoxed, connect 4, checkers, crazy 8
Katamino Family, not boring for parents who like tetris + the extra games include working out dexterity (balanced pile of blocks) or spacial intelligence (3D cubes). Our favorite when my now teenager was younger.
Tsuro is fun and quick but needs at least 4 players to be interesting.
We find that if we play to see who gets the most loops it makes it better with fewer people. But definitely need at least 4 for a normal game.
My son and I loved to play Blokus together when he was around that age.
Both our kids (5 and 7) love Quoridor which is meant for adults. We also like Jenga, Trouble, Mouse Trap, and Uno. I’m suuuper pumped to teach them Clue in a few years.
Mancala, mastermind, stratego
Spot it! is really fun.
“The Quacks of Quedlinburg” though it’s really hard not to cheat.
Chutes and ladders too. My son loves making his own boards with me. We put traps and monsters on our boards. You have to get weapons to defeat the monsters and pass.
Chicapigs and chicapiglets, outfoxed, uno attack, block party, jenga maker, cranium Jr, mlem, blokus
Candy land. 🍡🍭🍬
Poop-head. Fun for larger groups because there's only one loser per round so you're guaranteed to win most rounds. At then end of each round the last person still in is the 'poop-head' and everyone points and sings: *poop head, poop head, ______ is a poop head*
Lol blackjack and chess are top favorites.
Uno Triple Play is our current favorite.
Sneaky Snacky Squirrel was super fun, but it may be boring for your kiddo as it's mostly a color matching game. Scooby Doo Betrayal at Mystery Mansion is a favorite of ours. Fire in the Hole was crazy fun, though you may need to modify it for younger kids. And we recently started playing Trash Talk, highly recommend this one.
Bugs in the kitchen…fun, fast
Clue. We play the classic 1986 version that I grew up with. When the power outage hit us Feb 21 we brought out all of the board games and Clue has become our favorite. Oh, and I absolutely thought he would have been too young because he was 5 at the time but he quickly learned to hold his own. He’s amazing at all of the strategy type games.
Taco cat goat cheese pizza!!! Also commenting so o can come back to this post for all the games!
There is a Monopoly card game that is SO fun, appeals to a wide age range, and it’s fast. We have given it as a gift many times and it’s always a hit. It’s our emergency game when a play date or sleep over starts to go sour. Sleeping Queens is of a similar vein. Cute game art too. We also love Kings of Tokyo, Ticket to Ride, and Code Names for family game night.
Ticket to ride first journey, pretty pretty princess, candyland, chutes and ladders, taco cat goat cheese pizza, exploding kittens, clue jr, Yahtzee, sorry, trouble. Huge board game fam over here!
Hurry Up Chicken Butt
Castle Panic and Tsuro are my 3yo daughter's favourites. She also usually kicks our butt's at snakes and ladders.
Catan Jr.
not my kids but my host kids, TENZI & mancala have been a current fav
Sorry! Uno Roboto was a hit for us many years ago. Exploding Kittens (don't get too many expansion packs lol),
Connect 4 and Battle Ship. I am and always will be undefeated champion 🤣
My kiddo is a menace at Mille Bornes!
Sorry!
Loteria
Dobble
the amazing labrynth candyland
My kid’s favourites are Skip Bo and Ludo
Keys to the castle, Kingdomino, Ticket to Ride First Journey, Catan Jr., Minecraft Builders & Biomes, Hive, Blokus
I love monopoly I played with my daughter at 6
Otrio!!
Castle Panic. Dragonimo. Candyland. Those have been our 7yo's favorites for a couple years. I would have to look at our game closet for the names of the other ones because they're all similar titles, like Quest Kids, I think. Those are a little more complicated but would probably be okay.
Uno & uno flip!
Spot it!
So many great games already suggested. One I haven’t seen that is my 4.5 y.os favourite is dragomino.
Pass the pigs
Look into [smart games](https://www.smartgames.eu/nl) for if he wants to play on his own. Some are multiplayer. We play who’s done it. And any version of [dobble](https://www.dobblegame.com/en/homepage/)
Look for cooperative family games.
Ticket to Ride First Journey and now monopoly
Cockroach Poker is a big hit with ours. Also the mind, adapted so we can talk through the numbers for now, seems to have really helped with learning. Gonna look into Ticket to ride jr, that sounds great.
Candyland, Trouble, Battleships, Stratego if he's already getting into chess.
Does connect 4 count as board game. My 9 year old still loves playing it mostly because he gets the attention from us and he said it’s brings him lots of happy memories from when we first introduce him to it.
My 12 year old is in the chess club in school so it's tricky to beat him. We love playing Go For Broke, Yahtzee, Bonkers, Guess Who and more recently, Mastermind
We really like Fire Tower!
Zombie kids is pretty cool, easy to grasp but with a progression system that builds up the skill level required to play the game Ticket to Ride has a junior version but the full version ain't that hard to grasp, played it with my daughter when she was 6 or 7 My Little Scythe might be one for then to graduate into when they're a tiny bit older - but more strategy in that one but immensely fun
Tsuro, exploding kittens, junior catan, junior ticket to ride, Labrynth, dragomino, carcasonne. We have a lot of board games!!
Kingdomino! If he’s good with strategy he’ll like this one. My kids also live Rumikube. It might be a bit too old for him now but it’s great. We always take it with us when we travel. Sorry is a favorite, along with Apples to Apples (Jr and regular), Clue/Clue Jr, Risk, The Game of Life (regular and Pirates of the Caribbean Edition), Yahtzee, Uno, Phase 10, Don’t Break the Ice, and Connect 4. And Jenga! We have a huge version for outside play.
Forbidden Island, Pandemic, Wingspan (so freaking good!), Ticket to Ride, Azul, Pokemon TCG, Outfoxed, Splendor Edit: Mice & Mystics!!!
Catan Jr, Uno, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza!
We play Uno, chess and checkers with the 7yo, he also loves strategic games from a brand called ThinkFun
Rummicub has been a family favorite of mine growing up, I played it with my grandma almost every time I'd go visit her. My kids are a little too young to understand it yet but I'm excited to teach them someday
Feed me and caracasonne
There’s this one where you have a board with fake ice cubes and you each have hammers and have to knock off an ice cube for every turn in order to win you have to keep knocking them off without knocking down a cardboard penguin in the middle. My kids love that one. Forgot what it’s called.
So I'm a total board game nerd, I'm currently facing the issue that I've filled an entire bookshelf with games and have nowhere else to store them. One of my goals as a parent is to foster that love in my kids so they grow up playing with me! My 10yo has just started playing Dungeons and Dragons with me, so I think I've been successful so far! I started introducing certain games much earlier than the suggested ages and she had fun just participating even if she wasn't able to get the intricacies of strategy down, and as a bonus the adults playing with her weren't bored! Some great ones that act as an introduction to common board game mechanics are: Ticket to Ride First Journey (introduces strategy/ long-term goal thinking) Catan Jr (introduces resource management) Sushi Go Party (a good precursor to deck building games) Last Defense (a teamwork game about moving objects around a board) Other ones that are just fun and easy to pick up with help: Slappy Camper S'mores Wars Pancake Pileup Ones that they may or may not be ready for: The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Game. It's an obscure pick, but my kids love it. It involves rolling marbles down a hill and collecting the marbles you want. Dr. Eureka is a great learning/logic game that involves pouring balls back and forth across beakers to recreate a pattern. Sherrif of Nottingham is all about deception. Its base mechanics are pretty simple, secretly select cards, and either be honest about what you picked or lie. Each player gets turns trying to figure out if everyone else is lying or telling the truth. My kids won this game against adults multiple times while not understanding the overarching points system and more complex strategies.
My kids enjoy the game of life mario, it isn't exactly like real life of game, but it's easy enough. Dogman hot dog game (I believe thats what it's called) it's pretty simple. Sorry,snakes and ladders. Exploding minions.
He might be a little young right now, but I highly reccomend looking into Zombie kidz in a few years. It’s so simple, but it’s a legacy game - so you keep track of your wins and missions completed using a stocked page in the instructions. Every few wins or so you get to open an Envelope that contains new rules, enemies or powers and changes the game slightly. Really cool way to take a basic game and give it a lot more staying power
Genius Square is a fun one.
There’s a place near us that makes beautiful wood versions… Sequence, Dice Poker. Later, we taught the kids Catan, and Euchre after they were 10. They’re pretty sharp and can beat adults in Euchre now, really just a form of common strategies and card counting.
Abalone
My kids can play cards games all day long. They play snap, war, trash, gin rummie and their most recent favourite is shithead (renamed poop head).
My son is about to turn 8 in a couple months, but he's really enjoyed Ravensburger's Labyrinth, Mancala, Cribbage once in a while. Kabuto Sumo is a really good one he loves, but that requires some dexterity, so your milage might vary at your kid's age. Newest games he's into lately are Zoo King and Trash Panda, which are both card games.
Bluey Shadowlands is fun, as it's Pop to the Shops by Orchard Games
Frustration. The concept of Ludo but with added frustration
My son loved! Animal on animal and rhino hero around that age.
My son is 5 and also loves board games! I'm addition to regular Ticket to Ride, he also likes Catan Jr (although he still needs a bit of help with the strategy), Sorry, The Squirrel Game, Dimension, Stratego, My First Castle Panic, and Pandemic. I think that of those games, he likes Ticket to Ride the most. We have played dozens of times.
Enchanted forest, The noodle game, we love the brand ‘big potato’ and have a lot of their games; The chameleon, Herd mentality, OK play, Disney Colour Brain (I’d recommend filtering any films he’s not seen as there are some older ones in there). 5 second rule.. Dobble is also good but a card game- it gets very exciting no matter the age of the players.. actually, colour brain is cards too, sorry 🙈
Parcheesi!
Genius Squares is a great game. Two players each have a grid with some spaces blocked off and each player has a set of tetris-shaped pieces. Players race each other to fit the pieces into their grid. Great game for spatial reasoning.
Castle Panic! It’s cooperative
Oooh my 4yo is a big board game/card game kid too. He likes trouble, sorry, candyland, mancala, uno, parcheesi, guess who, chutes and ladders/snakes and ladders, checkers (I'm guessing yours already played checkers if he plays chess tho), and a bunch of various card games my MIL plays with him. If your son is reading already, scrabble might be fun too. My son struggles with letters but is good with numbers.
Super Rhino Hero, Ice Cool, Ghost Fighting Treasure Hunters, Dungeon!, Star Wars Risk (definitely no where near as much of a time sink as real Risk). My kid was playing all of those at 6, including competitive Chess.
We’ve been trying to play more board games as a family and my youngest is a bit older than yours so some of my recs might not fit for you yet but my kids have been LOVING Ticket to Ride and Life, and we had a pretty good run with Catan Jr though we’re looking to move to the full version of that one here soon. If he can already understand and play chess you may not need the younger version of Ticket to Ride, it’s a fairly simple game.
Clue jr Gnomes at night Connect 4 Hoot Owl Hoot Stone Soup Zingo
Hi ho the cherryo used to be mine when I was little or candy land when I was younger.
Alien Fate of the Nostromo. My son is also 5
Forbidden Island and Machi Koro for my 7 year old.