Mr. X and I have long been fans of board/table games, and before Toddler X joined the family, we frequently enjoyed duels in Scrabble, backgammon, Boggle, Yahtzee and Trivial Pursuit. But with an infant and early toddler, games took a backseat to baby play -- these days, most of our adult games are, quite literally, collecting dust in the garage.
But as Toddler X approached age 3, games slowly began to creep back into our lives. Like, really slowly -- snail slow, in fact, as the first game we really enjoyed all together was the hilarious (and super toddler-friendly) Snail's Pace Race
. Soon, we also began to play Where Is Sock Monkey?
, which Toddler X had received as a 2nd birthday gift but just couldn't grasp until around age 3.Next, it was the Richard Scarry's Busytown: Eye Found It!
game, a Christmas present last year and an immediate whole family favorite. Then, for his birthday in February, we gave Toddler X another popular toddler game -- The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel
-- which, again, was an instant hit.In fact, it was during a family game of Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel last night (which I won -- no going easy on Toddler X here!) that it struck me that I needed to write a games post. Any toy or activity that brings the whole family together is a good one, in my opinion, and gathering around a game board remains fun into adulthood (on our recent trip to Tahoe with our extended family, we played countless multi-generational games of Apples to Apples, Scattergories, Smart Ass...and, of course, Where is Sock Monkey?, which Toddler X insisted we bring). It's been fun introducing Toddler X to our family's board game culture, and I'm sure these games will bring your family lots of joy as well!
On a more self-serving note, it's been over 6 months since we introduced a new toddler game to our family, and man, are Mr. X and I ready for some variety! So after reading this, please share your favorite toddler games -- I can't wait to try them out.
Here are my suggestions:
Snail's Pace Race: I bought this for Toddler X last Christmas because the Amazon reviews said it was a fantastic first board game for toddlers, and I can tell you that I definitely concur. All you do is race 6 brightly colored (and super cute!) wooden snails across a game board, rolling dice with colored dots to indicate which snails move in each turn. You don't have "your own" snail -- everyone is working together to move all the snails forward (though they do encourage guessing which snails will come in first and last). It's a fun, sturdy game that introduces turn taking in a cooperative, rather than competitive, format.One thing I particularly like is that you can change the duration of the game depending on your child's attention span. On days when Toddler X's attention is short, we just get the first snail across the line, declare him the winner, and pack up the box. If Toddler X is still interested, we'll keep on playing until all the snails have crossed the line, with the last one being just as exciting as the first.
We bought 5 or 6 of these around Christmas time and gave them as gifts to several of our little pals in January and February -- it's a good choice for ages almost 3 year-olds on up.
Richard Scarry's Busytown: Eye Found It!: If you've read my top books list, you know we're huge Richard Scarry fans -- I was as a kid, and Toddler X is now. Last year, we discovered the Busytown tv show on Netflix, and we got to know Huckle and Sally Cat, Lowly Worm, and Hilda Hippo even better. When we discovered this game around Christmas, we knew it would be a good fit.The Busytown game is a super cool, "Where's Waldo?"-esque adventure combined with a board game. Here, unlike Snails Pace Race, you do have your own character game piece, but ultimately all players win or lose together -- again, no need to go easy on a toddler or risk a meltdown. The 4 foot long board (don't worry, it folds up) features tons of intricate, classic Richard Scarry drawings, with lots of small features incorporated into them -- balloons and shovels and trash cans and the like. Part of the game entails all players working together to find a specific item before time expires, using little plastic magnifying glasses to mark their finds.
It's a super cute and super fun game, and there are enough item cards that doing the searches remains fun and challenging play after play (just as challenging for mom and dad as it is for toddler!). If I had to choose any of the games in this post to play, Busytown would definitely be the winner.
: This is a hilarious game that Toddler X received as a 2nd birthday gift, but simply couldn't handle at that time. We packed it up for a year and pulled it out again just after his 3rd birthday, and wow -- what a difference a year makes! Right now, this is probably his single favorite game -- he requests it constantly. It's lots of fun for the whole family too -- though probably more enjoyable if you have a bigger house than we do!In this game, one person hides the sock monkey stuffed doll (included with the game) somewhere in the house (in plain sight, but tucked in a room somewhere -- we've had him coloring at the easel or wound up on the telephone cord, etc.). Then everyone else flips over cards with room features on them and poses questions to the hider, trying to identify the room in which he is hidden. "Is he in a room with a TV? With a sink? With a rug?" The hider answers the questions yes or no, and the cards are placed on the board accordingly. Eventually, someone flips over a "Look now!" card, and has 30 seconds to determine what room they think Sock Monkey is hidden in and go try to find him.
I love this game because it really does build Toddler X's logical reasoning skills -- you can see them improving from one week to the next. Whereas in the beginning, he'd randomly go search the whole house, now I can see him assimilating information as it comes to him -- "Hmm, it's in a room with a sink...must be the bathroom, kitchen or laundry room. The room doesn't have a mirror -- can't be bathroom...", etc. He's gotten good at hiding the monkey, and accurately answers questions about the relevant room now -- though, hilariously, he sometimes runs to the room in which he hid Sock Monkey to check on the answer to a question, thereby obviously giving away the location. But still, he loves loves loves the game and squeals with delight when someone finds the Sock Monkey he's hidden. This is a great game for a whole family to play together.
The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game: This is another game that gets rave reviews for young kids, and we've definitely enjoyed it, though maybe not as much as the others yet (though Toddler X did ask for and enjoy it last night, so we may be playing more in the near future). Here, each player gets a little cardboard tree trunk and a spinner dictates your activity at each turn -- using a pair of plastic squirrel pincers, you pick up colored acorns and try to fill your tree.This game is a bit harsher/real world than the others -- not only is there a clear winner (the person who fills their tree with each of the colors first -- me, last night), but one of the spinner segments is a wind gust that empties out all the acorns you've collected thus far, and another allows you to steal an acorn from someone else's tree -- two things that toddlers might find hard to accept. Toddler X actually handled both occurrences well last night, but I can see him having a hard time, on another occasion, if we told him he had to put back all his acorns, or that someone else was stealing one.
This game is slightly more mature than Snail's Pace Race, but still doesn't require reading, so I'd say it's fun for ages 3+ too.
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So there you go -- our favorite toddler/preschooler games. I'd love to hear what readers have to say about other offerings -- I'll add them to the bottom of this post.
Happy toddling!
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