As any parent reading this is well aware, schools across the United States are shutting down to slow the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19. Social distancing is now a new byword. While kids likely view this as an early start to an extended spring break, their parents worry about their education and maintaining some sort of curriculum. While nothing will fully replace a proper school setting and professional teachers, I feel like one alternative rises above all the potential workbooks and online resources.
Board games.
Playing a board game is a traditional family activity. The right game can be a great bonding experience while providing plenty of entertainment. You don’t have to worry about limiting screen time, either, since physical board games involve plenty of tactile experiences. Undoubtedly everyone reading this has some fond memories of gathering as a family to play a classic board game like Monopoly, Clue, or Scrabble.
I also propose that all these games can be educational without being overt about it. Sure, all those old traditional games might be a little lacking in the thinking department, but modern games run the gamut of mechanics and topics. If you’ve been away from board games since your childhood, you might be surprised as the depth, robustness, and even complexity of contemporary games. While the best games are available at your local game store, you can find plenty of worthy options at Target and Walmart.
So while you’re cooped up with your kids for the foreseeable future, try to make sure you have some fun while maintaining their education. I’ll go over several of the biggest hits with my family. For reference, my son is seven years old and can handle all the games below. My daughter is only five years old, so her gaming is much more limited.
Classics for Kids
Remember those old classics I listed? Well, now there’s slimmed down versions for little kids: Clue Junior, Monopoly Junior, Scrabble Junior. While each reduces the rules and size of the board, I think they actually make some improvements on their respective originals. For starters, the games are muc quicker, which helps with the target audience’s attention span. The number of players is capped at four, which ensures each player gets a turn in a timely manner. The player tokens are vibrant and bright, almost like little toys. The streamlined rules keep the action flowing without sacrificing too much of each game’s charm. Even Scrabble Junior’s pre-populated board offers some layers of strategy as you attempt to ensure your opponents can’t complete words while you try to complete your specific bonus words.
These are nice bridges from the extremely basic games like Candyland and Chutes & Ladders to the next level of games. The cartoon illustrations and bright colors make them very appealing to their intended little kid audience. I really appreciate Hasbro putting out these to help introduce the next generation of gamers to the classics.
The educational value differs for the three games. Scrabble Junior obviously helps teach letters and words. The board can be populated with words so players just match letters two per turn, which is great to facilitate little kids and avoid the long delays as players would otherwise mull over what words to form. Monopoly Junior involves numbers in two major ways: 1) counting money as you buy properties and pay rent and 2) reading the number on the die and moving corresponding spaces. Clue Junior teaches rudimentary deduction (although there’s no way to solve the mystery without uncovering every last cue) while making use of numbers (rolling a die to move characters) and color recognition (drink clues are yellow, time clues are white).
Colors/Patterns
Many games involve some form of color recognition or pattern matching. But the games in this section use such mechanics as the core of their gameplay. These skills are critical for young children but still just as important for older kids and even adults.
Azul
Azul is a beautiful game that uses bakelite tiles to form a mosaic on each player’s individual mat. Each turn you take tiles from the center to add to your board, matching the tiles with each other to eventually fill the grid. This game has been super popular ever since it came out and is lauded as a fantastic “gateway” game to attract new players to board games.
Blokus
Blokus is a tile laying game where each player assumes a specific color and tries to put down all his or her tiles while preventing the other players from doing the same. We’ve only played the smaller version, Blokus Duo, which only allows two players but the full version allows up to four. A single glance lets you see the game has the same visual attraction as Tetris, even if the pieces aren’t strictly tetrominoes, and the gameplay can be just as addicting.
Castle Keep
Castle Keep is a neat Gamewright game that has each player attempting to form his or her own castle of nine cardboard tiles. Each piece must match its neighbors in color or style, which provides great color and pattern recognition. Gamewright as a company releases a ton of games for a younger audience, from little kids to pre-teens. We’ve rarely been disappointed with any of their games.
Eleminis
Eleminis might be hard to find but provides loads of rapid family fun. It’s essentially an advanced form of rock/paper/scissors. Each of the five elements (air, earth, fire, plant, water) can take out two other elements, while the star acts as a wild card and trash acts as a blocker. Each card clearly marks which cards it can replace. The goal is to collect all five elements. It’s simple but extremely fun with players disrupting each other’s element collections while trying to complete their own sets. My daughter loves to give me trash cards while I like trying to obtain a “pure” Eleminis set without any stars.
Sushi Go Party!
Sushi Go Party! is the big brother of the original Sushi Go card game. This enhanced version contains a slew of additional courses that let you modify the game with a different menu of options each time you play. The basis of the game is each player gets a small deck of cards, picks one to keep, and passes the deck to an adjacent player. Each card type has a different scoring mechanism. Some let you collect as many as possible, others limit how many you should collect, and others reward uniqueness. There’s multiple ways to win but we always have fun trying to outguess each other while building our collections of matched food.
UNO
UNO is a family classic. Sure, it’s just a themed version of Crazy 8’s but the addition of the special cards (Reverse, Skip, Draw Two) enhance the experience. The colors and numbers are also much easier for kids to distinguish than a standard deck of playing cards. Recently they’ve started releasing more alternative versions. UNO Flip! contains double sided cards, a light side and a dark side. The light side is the standard colors and mostly standard special cards, while the dark side is new colors (teal, pink, orange, purple) with pumped up special cards (e.g. Draw Five, Skip Everyone). Each side also contains special Flip cards that cause everyone to turn around their cards as well as the draw and discard piles. Suddenly your awesome hand might not look so hot. DOS is very different game. It involves some simply math since you can play cards that add up to the target number. It still uses number and color matching, and the addition mechanic amps up the difficulty for slightly older kids.
Math
Another common theme in most board games is math. Even rolling dice and counting spaces is a rudimentary form of math. Points are a common way to declare a winner. The games here don’t try to obfuscate their mathiness, though.
Lost Cities
Lost Cities is a wonderful two player game. Each player tries to lay out cards in ascending order within each color. It’s always a gamble since you can easily lose points if you don’t collect enough cards. And you never know what cards your opponent is holding that might be key to finishing your set. We used to play a simplified homemade version before my son could fully grasp the rules but now we can play fast and furious. The scoring can be confusing with the subtracting and multiplication, but during the game you can be concerned with just collecting as many ascending cards as possible. This game is great for couples, too. We originally bought it for our honeymoon.
Math Fluxx
Math Fluxx is version of the every malleable Fluxx card game. This version focuses on numbers as keepers with different numerical goals. One goal might be to collect the numbers 3, 1, and 4 (for pi), while another might be to collect your age. The rules can change each turn, so the number of cards you draw, play, and keep are always shifting. It can get confusing, especially your first few games. It’s also a little disconcerting that someone can win instantly without notice. But it plays super quick once you get in a groove. There’s plenty of reading but each card has enough unique visuals that kids can pick up most of them and just focus on the numbers.
Zeus on the Loose
Zeus on the Loose is another Gamewright game. You can use the theme to learn about some Greek gods and kids love the little Zeus figurine. The game works by players discarding to the middle and adding their card to the pile’s total. So it’s great at reinforcing addition. Some cards reset the pile’s total, so it’s not simply a race to 100. You also want to make the pile total an even multiple of 10 (i.e. any number ending with a 0) so you can nab Zeus and win the game. The god cards each do unique actions and come up through drawing cards, so everyone has a shot at playing them. It can get a little hectic to add to the discard pile’s total if you play too fast, but there’s no rush. Especially with younger kids, make sure to focus on the addition. You could even use paper, chalkboard, or dry erase board to track the total and really drive home the math lesson.
Words & Letters
Reading is super important. You couldn’t read this article if you didn’t understand how to put letters together and form words. Of course all games require reading, even if it’s just to read the instructions. Most games also include reading during gameplay. The games in this small section focus entirely on putting letters together to form words.
Quiddler
Quiddler is a card game where players try to form increasingly longer words out of cards containing a single letter. You start with three cards and need to form a three letter word to end the round. Then you move up to four cards, then five, and so on. You eventually start being able to form multiple smaller words or go for a single big word. Those stylized letters can be almost impossible to decipher but fortunately there’s a clear version of each letter as well. Obviously this game requires kids to know how to spell. One idea is to modify the rules so you can only make shorter words. Or forgo the competitive aspect and just work together to form words. Not every game has to involve keeping score and declaring a winner.
Scrabble
Scrabble is the classic game of laying down letter tiles on a board to form words and score points. Rarer letters are worth more points while special spaces modify the points earned for a word placed on them. For younger kids, go with Scrabble Junior, covered earlier. But if you’re ready for the real thing you can’t go wrong with Scrabble. My wife hates playing me since I take so long to ruminate on which letters to play. Now she just obsessively plays it on her phone against the computer so she doesn’t have to wait for other players.
Geography
It’s no secret that United States students are terrible at geography. Some of that is a lack of focus in school curriculum. But there are plenty of board games that should enhance your child’s geographic skills and knowledge. Some of the most popular modern board games fall under this category.
Game of the States
Game of the States is a fairly old game but appears to have a modern facelift and a focus on STEM. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve played this one since I was a kid about 30 years ago, so my memory is fuzzy. You drive your truck around from state to state to collect goods and sell them in another state. This game is almost every school subject rolled into one. You handle money, you match goods, you read cards, and you move all over a map of the United States. Hopefully your kid (and you) can point out where Iowa is on a map after playing this game.
Pandemic
Pandemic is a modern classic. It’s theme perfectly fits our current state of emergency, too, which makes it a useful lesson to show kids how epidemics turn into pandemics. Pandemic is a cooperative game and really launched that style of game. The players all work together to try and cure the four diseases. As you can see the board is a map of the world (sans the poles). There’s no continent or country labels but several major cities are included as spots on the board. The different connecting lines highlight how disease (and people) can spread, with some cities being more isolated and others being major hubs. This game is tense, with only a single victory condition but multiple ways to lose. It can also lead to “quarterbacking”, where a single player takes over and bosses everyone else. But when played cooperatively with a good mentality, this game shines. There’s been expansions, different settings, and alternative gameplay versions, but the base game still remains one of the best board games ever.
Risk
Risk is the original board game to include a map of the world. Lots of people learned the basics of world geography from this game. Why else would so many people know where Kamchatka is? Obviously Risk is not a good simulation of actual war and its strategy boils down to amassing more armies than your opponents (while holing up in Australia to get those two free armies each turn by controlling a single choke point). It’s also notorious for lasting forever. But it’s simple to play, so before you leap into more advanced war games like Axis & Allies you should introduce your kids to world domination with the classic Risk.
Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride is probably the modern classic board game. Pretty much everyone has played this game of connecting cities with trains to form longer routes across the map. There’s way more than geography for younger kids as well, with counting and color recognition being major mechanics. You can play it cutthroat and block other players, or be gentler and not be so aggressive. If you are playing with younger kids, I’d suggest Ticket to Ride: First Journey, which simplifies the routes and replaces all the words with giant pictures. Ticket to Ride has a slew of additional maps, including Europe, India, and Japan. Start with the base game, which is the United States and has the simplest set of rules, then branch out to the others to expand your international geographic knowledge.
Trekking the National Parks
Trekking the National Parks: Second Edition plays somewhat similar to Ticket to Ride. There’s a map but instead of cities each space is a United States national park. The cards are dual purpose: you can use the numbers to move around the board or collect the icons to eventually claim a park. There are major parks that everyone can claim and give each player a special power. You can collect colored chips to score points at the end. There’s a lot going on but that gives each player a wide range of options each turn. There’s rarely a boring point. The park cards are beautiful and include a gorgeous picture of each park along with a unique fact. You do have to look closely to see the state outlines on the map, and the map is slightly distorted toward the western half of the country. But this is a unique take on geography by highlighting our national parks rather than states and cities.
Collecting
A final common game mechanic is collecting. Whether you’re collecting points, cards, chips, or any other components, many games have the players accumulating items to win. The games here really focus on the collecting actions.
Catan: Junior
Catan: Junior is the junior alternative to the regular Catan (formerly Settlers of Catan). I’ve unfairly disliked Catan despite never having played it, because of the extreme social aspect of its trading mechanic. But I love Catan: Junior. There’s still plenty of trading but it’s with the bank and market rather than with other players (although a variant rule does open up that possibility as well). I love the push and pull of collecting the components you need to build your next ship or building and expand your pirate domain. It’s billed as a light family adventure and it works wonderfully, especially with the duration hitting the sweet spot of being just long enough to allow plenty of action while not overstaying its welcome and letting you start a new game.
Electronic Labyrinth
Electronic Labyrinth is a variation of the base game Labyrinth. The game plays similarly with players pushing the square board pieces around to form paths that allows them to collect treasures for the various characters in the game. The neatest factor is the electronic book that talks. There’s bits of audio for the beginning and end of each game that doesn’t change, but there’s also audio for each character to request a specific treasure and reward you for its return. The evil witch also makes random appearances to throw a monkey wrench in your plans, while the narrator will pop up to help everyone. My kids love the storybook audio and fairy tale theme. The witch actually scared my daughter the first few times and now it’s still fun to act scared when you hear the audio announcing her appearance. Collecting the treasures is fun using the maze to wind your way to and fro, while keeping score with collected gems is a neat tactile inclusion. Picking up the treasures to carry around lets kids interact even more with the game. It all adds up to an enjoyable fantasy romp.
Forbidden Island
Forbidden Island/Desert/Sky are a series of cooperative board games from Gamewright (same company mentioned twice already, for Castle Keep and Zeus on the Loose). The first one, Forbidden Island, unfortunately came out the same year as Pandemic and has had to live in the shadow of that game. But Forbidden Island is a good, unique game in its own right and you should definitely play even if you’ve mastered Pandemic. The players all work together to collect enough cards to eventually collect four treasures then get the heck off the island together before it sinks into the water. The “board” is created by randomly placing a set of high quality cardboard tiles, which means the layout is different every time you play. And sometimes that can result in much more difficult games. This is a the right level of intensity for an audience slightly younger than Pandemic and the mechanics are streamlined to keep the action moving as you collect the necessary elements to win as a team. Forbidden Desert moves the scene to a desert wracked by sand storms and has you assembling a flying machine to escape. The pieces to the machine are cool and you actually build a little flying boat. Forbidden Sky is the latest game, but sadly it’s been in the shrink wrap ever since my wife bought it years ago. I’ve been leery of opening it in case it doesn’t live up to its predecessors, but it looks cool as heck with its electricity and cloud theme.
My First Stone Age
My First Stone Age is a junior version of Stone Age. I’ve never played the original game but this version is a simple, light collecting game with strong components. There is an oversized Meeple for each player to move around the board, the collection items are nice wood components, and the cardboard tiles are thick and sturdy. You are trying to collect items to eventually claim one of the three huts on the board and the first player to collect three huts is the winner. Moving around the board is controlled via a memory game with the circular tiles around the board indicating where you move on your turn. This does mean if you memorize the tile placement you can jump to wherever you need each turn, but each tile is only available once per hut and the player collecting a hut can swap any two tiles. It’s still easy to focus on the most important tile to be able to collect huts, but there’s plenty of other actions you need to take to even make it to that point. My daughter will actually sit and play this one with her big brother, which is a testament to the game and its components.
Splendor
Splendor is an abstract game where you need to accumulate high quality chips representing different colored gems and trade them in to accumulate cards. Each card gives you a discount on all future card purchases. The higher cards give you ever increasing points. The first player to reach 15 points wins. This collecting game emphasizes color recognition, counting, simple addition and subtraction, and plenty of logic to plan out your moves and outsmart your opponents. I love just handling the chips, and I hate poker. I picked this game up on a whim when it was on clearance at Target and it’s been one of the best under $20 purchases I ever made. My son and I played this game non-stop when we first got it. Nowadays we bring it out to break up the non-stop Ticket to Ride my son demands.
Just for Fun
So that’s a good selection of board games you can use to keep up your children’s education while schools are closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Hopefully you find some new ones or revisit some favorites. And remember, while keeping up with a curriculum is important for your children’s academic career, the most important part is to spend time together as a family and have fun. So I’ll throw out a couple games just for fun.
Dungeon Mayhem
Dungeon Mayhem is in heavy rotation with my son, especially since we picked up the recent expansion Monster Madness. Each player gets a unique character specific deck of cards and 10 hit points. There are four common action icons which can show up in any combination on each card. Each character has three unique abilities. It’s super simple to play, hence the age 8+ rating. It can be really luck based depending on your opening draw, but that’s true of most card games. It’s also so fast to play that you can just start a new game. We’ve only played it two player so far, but it supports up to four, and some of the character abilities will greatly benefit from the higher numbers. There’s even silly abilities like making players dance to draw cards or praise you to avoid taking damage, which keep the game light-hearted.
Hey, That’s My Fish
Hey, That’s My Fish could have gone under the collecting category. Each player is a different colored set of penguins. You move around collecting fish and slowly disintegrating the ice until the point no one can move anymore. Then you count your fish to declare a winner. The strategy is deeper than one might expect. You want to target the tiles with more fish, but you also need to cut off the other players while avoiding getting cut off yourself. You also get to choose where all your penguins start, so there’s strategy right out of the gate. The main reason this doesn’t get much play with our family is the setup takes a while since you have to randomly place all the tiles in neat rows and columns. Once it’s set up, though, the game moves well and allows players of all levels to have fun.
Unicorn Glitterluck
And finally, my daughter would not let me finish a list of games without including her current favorite, Unicorn Glitterluck: A Party for Rosalie. This is a cooperative game from HABA, which makes really quality games for kids. The components here include nice chunky wooden unicorns, translucent pink plastic cloud crystals, strong cardboard tokens, and a unique die with a glittery cloud on one face. My daughter adores this game. The unicorn theme and colors go a long way with her, as does the great tactile elements. I appreciate that it’s cooperative so it encourages teamwork and brainstorming the best course for each player to take. The tension as you roll Rosalie multiple times and she advances ever closer to her party before it’s ready is just right for a kid’s game.
Go Forth and Play
There you have it. Those are the most popular board games with my family. I love the time we share together enjoying the game and each other. It keeps us all away from screens and distracted from the real world crisis unfolding around us. And they are sneakily educational to boot. So sit down, break open a box, and have some fun.
Let me know what games you and your family enjoy playing.
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