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Great Games for Kids & Families
This is an ongoing artice. We'll be adding more great games for kids and families as we discover them or get to write them up.
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We're very impressed by the qualiy of Melissa & Doug toys. Good, solid wooden toys that use kid-safe paint. You can find them in some LA shops, but by clicking here to purchase you help keep this site online.
A game/puzzle shop that looks promising.
Blokus
The idea is simple. The result is fun!
Take a simple plastic board of 400 squares. Pass out 84 various-shaped pieces in four colors amongst four people. Instruct them to fill the board, matching corners. Then enjoy the game as each person outsmarts and becomes outsmarted. Mattel's Blokus elicited cries of "I love Blokus!" when brought to our testers.
It's as much for adults as children. Rated for ages 5 and up, our family almost-5-year-old enjoyed it with some help when we first got it and now at 5½ she's been playing on her own. I play somewhere between her and our family 12-year-old. I haven't won a game yet.
A friend reports that when he and his wife play with their daughter, they're trying to get a handle on the defensive while she's got her defense down and goes on the offensive.
With no moving parts or battery requirements, this is an excellent game for all family collections.
Around $26
A Mattel board game.
Also available in other forms and for computers.
Recommended by Deborah Shadovitz.
If you love Scrabble you should enjoy BANANAGRAMS, and if you don’t enjoy Scrabble you may likely fall in love with this variation of the word puzzle idea.
BANANAGRAMS
Some folks love Scrabble while others feel it’s too much luck of the draw and dependent on how the person before you plays. This word game provides the fun of the Scrabble crossword style — but leaves you full control of your own word puzzle.
The official rules say to Place all 144 tiles face down on the table. (They call this the “bunch.” I like to leave them in the yellow banana, turn my eyes, and pick from there. Either way, if you’re playing with 2-4 players, each takes 21 letters to start. For more players you’d start with fewer tiles.
Upon callout of the word “split,” each of you begins to build his own crossword-style puzzle, independently of the others, on the table in front you. (Leave yourself a lot of room — more room than you believe you’ll need — to build your puzzle.) You can move your letters and words around as you do this initial build — or at any time during the game.
The first person to use all of his letters calls out “peel!” and takes another tile. All others take another tile, too. Again, the first person to use all his letters calls “peel.” And so on — until there are no more tiles. As you might guess, the first person to use all his tiles when there are none left, wins. (There's no scoring.)
Just when you think you're not doing well...
Often a few “peels” will provide you with enough letters to create words when you’ve been stuck, while the person placing letters fastest will get stuck.
It’s fun to rethink your words, to grab the “-ed” or “-y” of a word in order to build a new word elsewhere. Of course you can do more than remove the ending of a word. You can totally pull any part of your puzzle apart to construct anew.
There are a few other rules if you’d like to follow them: dumping hard-to-place letters, use of nouns, etc.
One thing I love about this is that because each builds his own puzzle at his own vocabulary level, you can play with people of varied ages. I’ve played with a 12-year-old and we each won one of our two games. (We used a free iPhone app called CheckWord whenever we weren’t sure a word was really a word. I'm also for any app that helps people discover new words.)
Another fun thing: clean-up is easy. Just toss all the tiles back into their banana bag.
About $15
To find a reseller near you in the United States, check this page.
Recommended by Deborah Shadovitz.
If you're thinking that every great card game that can be invented has been, but you don't know about Perpetual Commotion, I have good news for you
.
Perpetual Commotion®
The game's website calls it "fast, furious and FUN" — and that's exactly right.
The game is a bit like solitaire but oh, so different.
How my family plays:
Each player uses his own colored deck. Everyone counts out 13 "Feeder" cards, placing them face down, then puts five cards beside that deck, face up. Put the rest down for now. Then the play begins — and the rush is on!
When the game begins, any player who has a Start card face up, puts it out in the center “Arena” between all players. If any player has a 2 of any color, he puts it on top The color of that stack is now defined. Anyone who has a 3 of that same color puts in on top, and so on through 12. Once a 12 is placed, someone gets to top it with a Stop card, then turn over the pile putting it out of play to await scoring.
When no face-up cards can be played, you grab the rest of your cards, called Playmaker cards, and turn them over by 3s (solitaire style), playing any 3rd card that's a Start card or fits a stack. Once you run through those cards, you place the top card at the bottom and go 3 at a time again. You get to put that top/third card on a stack if appropriate. Not the cards beneath.
Any time you play one of your face-up five cards, leaving an open space, you turn over your top Feeder card and put it in that space so it can be played.
The game gets crazy when everyone is slapping down cards, trying to beat others or waiting for someone to play a card — especially when it comes to the Stop cards!
The first person to place all of his 13 cards, calls “Out.” Then all of the played cards are counted and scored against any negative points a player has because of his left-over 13.
(There's a die but we don't use it and I've never seen it so I can't address it's use.)
The game is rated for ages 8 & up, but our family 5 year old not only plays (our version) well, but notices and reminds me whenever I don't see a card to be played. I know a 9-year-old speed wiz. And the game actually belongs to a 12-year-old.
Special thanks to the makers for providing two replacement cards for when a card gets lost or damaged beyond use.
The $18 box comes with six card decks so you can play with 2-6 players. There is also a two-person box set for $8.95. With either, you can buy $7.95 expansion sets, providing two more colored decks, Silver and Gold or Black and White, so you can add two more players. There are two expansion sets, each with a set of two more colors.
Perpetual Commotion® is the first game from New Hampshire-based Goldbrick Games, a family-owned company i am thrilled to have discovered. It took me long enough! The game was released in 2004! They also have a game called Debate This!®.
To learn more, read the directions, find a retailer, or buy online, visit
GoldbrickGames.com/games. Our copy came from Memories N More, 109 S. Detroit Street, Los Angeles, CA 90036 323-930-1764.
Recommended by Deborah Shadovitz.
~ Deborah Shadovitz
Editor-in-Chief Deborah Shadovitz
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