Listmania! Ten Best Family Games
In this day and age when leisure time is about as scarce as people who don’t own cell phones, it is more important than ever that families schedule time to be together. There is nothing my family likes better than playing games, the kind where you all sit at the table and tease and joke and high five each other when you win. Get some snacks, a tall glass of whatever, and let the fun begin. Oh, and taunting the losing side until the next round is also one of the major benefits.
For varying age groups, the best multiplayer games for families:
Uno- What could be better than a game in which double-crossing is not only ok, it’s encouraged?
Candyland- I’m not sure any kid should grow up without playing Candyland.
Jenga- Building tall things that satisfyingly crash at some point is a natural fit for kids.
Parcheesi- Simple, fast-paced, and easy to understand game that has been around for centuries, so it must be doing something right!
Scattergories- Fun and vocabulary building at the same time!
Cranium-14 games in one, what’s not to like? And if you hurry, it is half price!
Clue- Was it Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with a pipe? And for those that think their kid is too young to be discussing murders and motives, there is a new version, Clue Junior, in which the mystery of a missing chocolate cake is solved.
The Game of Life- Life is all about choices, and this game is a real-time choices and consequences lesson.
Monopoly- Again, how can you grow up and not play Monopoly?
Scrabble- Nothing feels quite like a triple word score! You can get the classic or the Junior Edition.
What about you? Are there any obvious ones that you feel like telling me about, so I can smack my forehead and exclaim, ‘D’oh!” when I read the comments?
My family is actually a big fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean version of Life. You get to be a ‘pirate’ or a ‘landlubber’, buy ships and a mascot- good fun! It moves a lot quicker than the traditional version, which I think is a plus.
And it’s always lots of fun to read the life cards in your best pirate voice! ARGH!
No forehead smacking please. There are better ways to kill off your brain cells. Just a couple of additions…Chinese Checkers (just don’t lose your marbles) we loved those beautiful marbles and in the old metal version the board used to twist open and you could store them right inside. Chutes & Ladders for the real little guys and Yatzee when they’re a bit older. Then the clasic card games Go Fish & Old Maid. In fact, with a plain old deck of playing cards there are any number of games you can play and they are very portable for family trips. That was a staple of many, many summer evenings when we went to the lake as kids. There was no TV at the lake so we were forced to interact with each other
Charades…just hysterical with kids.
Twister
Tip-It
Mousetrap
My brothers and I always enjoyed Hi-Ho Cherry-o. And of course Chutes and Ladders, Kerplunk (retro, I know), and Hungry Hungry Hippos. Oh, and there was one game called Ready Set Spaghetti but I’m not sure they make that one anymore.
We all played Sorry when we were kids in the 70′s and 80′s. Then one day my mom got out HER old Sorry game board from the 50′s with its wood pieces. That was pretty fun to play with as well.
Scrabble is the family game of choice, with dictionary privileges for the disenvocabularied. We play in teams if the group is larger than four. Winner has to put it away. And Deluxe Scrabble is the only way to go; the turntable base and the ridges to hold the tiles in place are essential.
Guess Who? was the game that saved my sanity. It was the ideal game when Youngest reached that difficult age at which she couldn’t compete with the older siblings, but couldn’t bear to be left out.
I always liked Trouble (gotta love the popping dice bubble) and pick-up sticks.
Uno literally used to turn violent in my house growing up. I tipped over the coffee table more than one time due to the double crossing (CHEATING) from my brother.
Blokus, totally fun.
It was Yahtzee that taught me that my sister is the absolutely most lucky person in the world and that there are some things that smarts just can’t help. It also taught me that I hate random games of chance where there is no strategy involved.
There have been different versions of “Clue Junior” around for a while–the one I had, called “Clue Jr.: The Case of the Missing Pet” came out in 1989. It was great because you had a special red magnifying glass to look at the solution when the time came. There is also “The Case of the Hidden Toys”–1995.
I enjoyed Memory games, and various kinds of Bingo. We had one called Wildlife Bingo that had pictures of endangered species of North America. I also played Dominoes with my dad.
Cribbage.
I’ll second Sorry, my family loves it. Card games are great, too.
For trapped-in-the-car, we play a simpler version of 20 Questions, called “Thinking of an Animal”, which children old enough speak can play. Unlimited questions, “yes” or “no” answers only. As the kids get older you can branch out to extinct species and mythological creatures.