Multi-age family games?

[Lucy in Australia]

This is probably a big ask, but for those of you with kids of wide-spread ages, are there any family games everyone enjoys? We have DS 18, DS 15 & DD nearly-5, and while the big brothers are extremely good at playing games that are appropriate for DD, I though I'd ask for suggestions, because there are only so many times one can play Hungry Hippos before going slightly cross-eyed :laugh:

[Arcadia]

Uno, Monopoly, Chinese Checkers and Blackjack can be played by your daughter with her brothers.

Happy Family (card game) and Snap (card game) too.

I hangout at my aunt's as a kid and her kids are 12, 10, 8 and 3 years older than me.

[nd293]

Dd is 6 years older than ds. At nearly-5 it was mostly card games that could bridge the age gap: we have War, Crazy 8s and Go Fish. Guess Who? / Who am I? was the first non-card game we tried that worked reasonably well. That's the one where you pick a card with a face on it and your opponent asks eliminating questions to guess which face you have. Snakes and Ladders can work. Ds loved playing Whatever Next! a game where the player performs actions from a card (quack like a duck, touch something blur etc).

 

Looking ahead a little, Trouble or Monopoly Junior are possibilities. Once ds learned to read comfortably he loved playing Scrabble - here the idea of participating in a 'grown up' game was more important than being able to play independently and we looked at his tiles and talked him through word options when it was his turn.

[FriedClams]

Very, very fun games for all-

 

Wits and Wagers

Quelf

[Carrie12345]

My 7yo was usually teamed up with an older person for just about any game.  It's helped him to learn the rules and, eventually, strategy.  Now he's able to play a few on his own, like Blokus and Rummikub (sp?) and he's started to become a worthy opponent in Catan.  For things like 5-Second Rule, we make up special questions for him that are challenging enough to not be "cheating", but give him a more fair chance with his limited common knowledge.

 

The 3yo is now a frequent dice roller, piece mover, card hander.  It makes games move annoyingly slow sometimes, but it'll eventually pay off when someone's looking for a good match!

[I talk to the trees]

There's a Moose in the House and Sleeping Queens were dd's favorites at that age. Gamewright makes quite a few games which are simple enough for young players, yet entertaining for older ones.

[happi duck]

Spot It!

[MiMi 4under3]

Spot It!

 

One of our favorites!

[Cinder]

My youngest is 7 and 10 years younger than her brothers. For many games she's just my partner: Rummikub, Bananagrams. 10 Days Across the USA. For others she can hold her own with maybe some help: Monopoly, Blokus, Farkle, Sorry, checkers, UNO, Mille Bornes. With Blokus and Sorry she caught on pretty quickly at a young age. With Monopoly, she always wants to play and has needed less help over the years. When she was about 6 or 7 her main goal in Monopoly was to collect one of each color property so she could make a rainbow. Rainbow is her favorite color. :laugh:

[Miss Tick]

We've been playing Forbidden Island. It is a cooperative game and my youngest teams with a grown-up. She keeps track of the water level marker, holds the treasures as the are collected, etc. So she is participating but not totally playing, although she does hear everybody reason out the moves.

[Lucy in Australia]

Oh, wow, thank you! So many great suggestions & I'm thrilled to see lots I'd never heard of. Off to investigate :thumbup1:

[LostSurprise]

Good suggestions so far!

 

Skipbo and Uno are great for that age. As are common card games like Old Maid, Crazy8s, GoFish, etc. 

 

 

I'll try to list some from younger to older. 

 

Animal Upon Animal (a really, really fun balancing game)
Loopin' Louie (trying to get the airplane guy to pick up all of your discs)
Alfredo's Food Fight (flinging cloth meatballs at a spinning chef)

Batik (putting shapes between glass, trying not to be the first to go over the top)
Sorry Sliders (sliding pieces...a bit like shuffleboard)
Incan Gold (press your luck treasure hunting game)
For Sale (buying and selling funny houses to make the most profit, easy card game, fun)
Bohnanza (trading game, fun and easy card game)
Coloretto (making matching piles of colored lizards)

Blokus (out-manuevering each other to put shapes on a board, she would be great strategically but she could do it)

Ticket to Ride (collecting cards to place trains, she would need help reading her goals so the cooperative version Ticket to Ride Asia might be the easiest)

She would also be able to play cooperative games if she takes direction easily. Some kids don't mind being directed through their turn and cooperative games mean you're all playing together. Something like Forbidden Island or Flash Point. 

 

Of these I think Bohnanza might be the best fit. It's a game where I've played with many young children, and although you have to walk them through the steps (keep your cards in order, plant first one or two, draw 2, trade with everyone) they love the trading. It's a lot of talking to the other players and finding if they have something you're collecting. It's good for observation and negotiation skills. In a few years Dominion might be a good game. You usually have to shuffle for them, but kids love buying money, actions, and property and adding it to their deck. I've found that most of the lighter board games are possible with a 6-7 year old...as long as they're interested. 

 

BTW, I linked to Amazon in a lot of cases because it's familiar and it has reviews, not because it's the cheapest place to get these games. Best of luck!

[Plateau Mama]

Quirkle is a favorite in our house. (Kids are 14, 12, 6)

 

Ticket to ride card game was too difficult for my guy, but he loves to play it on the xBox.

 

Sequence

 

Jenga

 

Monopoly

 

Sorry (little guy loves sorry)

[Pam in CT]

Life is too short for games that amount to slogging around a board based on a random number generator!!!  Just Say No to Sorry!

 

 

 

Games that depend on visual perception / visual reasoning -- dominoes, Set, Othello, Blokus, Mastermind -- work at remarkably young ages.  I have one nephew who kicked the butts of everyone else in the extended family on Set when he was no more than 5.

 

Games that depend on probability -- Yahtzee, Farkle, Sequence, Shake Up, and all sorts of card games -- work as soon as the youngest is able to do simple addition to work out the scoring (and it's cool to watch really young kids internalize probabilities before they've had any instruction, just by working it out through example...)

 

Once kids can read, there are a lot of games, some of them surprisingly interesting, that riff off of maps and map-reading and moving-through-space strategies (Scrambled States of America is a bit silly but fun; Borderline is good; and we especially like the 10 Days Across _________ series).

 

And once kids can spell, even a little bit, they can team up with a buddy to play games like Scrabble, Bananagrams, and our overall family favorite game Quiddler.

 

 

 

For really young kids, I adore Close Up -- it's a glorified matching / Go Fish game but uses famous works of art.  One card is the whole painting and the matching card is a close up of a single detail, forcing the players to look really, really attentively.  Little kids are often better than adults (who often look very holistically).  I've played it with special ed preschoolers and my husband.  There are all sorts of decks -- particular museum collections, impressionist, cubist, etc.  I see Amazon now carries them -- for years I've collected sets from various museum shops.

 

 

The main thing is, everyone should have a good time.  For us, that means, we do not go to Candyland!  :laugh:

 

[Kareni]

I'll add a hearty second for SET.

 

Two more games ~

 

Rat-a-Tat Cat.

 

Continuo.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Farrar]

Dix It.  It's a voting game (like Balderdash) but there's no writing and only marginally an advantage in having a great vocabulary, smarts, etc.  Younger kids can play at nearly the same level as adults.  You have to caption a strange picture and then figure out which one the caption applies to.  It's really fun.

 

[Kareni]

Also The Secret Door (a co-operative game).

 

Regards,

Kareni

[LostSurprise]

Just be warned, the abstract nature of Dixit can make it hard for younger ones to play. 

 

Faces (like Apples to Apples but with pictures, the only text is on the subject card)

Momma Mia (collecting pizza ingredients and orders, putting down recipes when you think all the ingredients are in the stack, great for small kids because they aren't doing the memory aspect, harder for adults because they are)

Tsuro (laying a path to make your guy go the farthest...as hard or easy as you make it)

[shukriyya]

You've gotten a lot of good suggestions here. From the makers of Quiddler, which a pp mentioned and is one of our faves, comes Five Crowns,, a rummy-like game with rather nice artwork. At that age my ds loved Enchanted Forest and I actually enjoyed, rather than endured, playing it ;)

[HS Mom in NC]

Escape is our favorite.  It's a cooperative game.  Here's an in depth review:

 

 

[nd293]

I wanted to add: if you get any card games, it is a huge help if you also get a stand to hold cards. Little people can play card games long before their hands can hold all the cards!

 

This is what we got: http://www.fishpond.com.au/c/Toys/q/Playing+Card

[Lavandula]

DD always liked Sorry as a young kid and I've also enjoyed it. It also causes less fights than monopoly does. Monopoly seems to temporarily tear apart the family.

[*Lulu*]

Fluxx and GUBs have both been hits here.