It's Never Too Late to Start (or Revive) Family Game Night!

Our family loves to play games - board games, card games, dice games, tile games, roll and write games - we love them all. Over the years we have acquired quite a collection of games and have borrowed or traded games with other families to get more variety.

There is nothing better than playing games with your children and you will find that they are actually very good at catching on to rules. While our family does take note of the suggested age listed on the game, we have found that our children can play games with us at an earlier age than listed. Often times we will start by letting our child play "with" us like a team against another child and parent "team" so they can see how we play.

Image Credit: Jenny Sites

Tips for playing games with younger children:

Learn how to play the game before teaching it to children.
Play games when your child is in a good mood and not tired or hungry. This will help them have a longer attention span.
Discuss social rules such as taking turns and good sportsmanship before starting.
Be patient. You may need to explain more than one time.
For the first game, play through the game openly and talk about strategies. On their turn, ask questions such as "What move(s) can you make?" "Which would be the best move or choice to make?" "Why?"
Don't start out as too competitive so that your child has a chance to win. If they always lose, they won't want to play.
When counting final points, help them put points together in groups of 10 to make adding points easier. This teaches them how to find numbers that add up to 10 and then they can skip count to get the total.

Here is a list of our favorite games (in no particular order):

Image Credit: Jenny Sites