Gaming with Toddlers 2 – His Games

Board gaming for young children is big business. Haba is the most famous company catering to young gamers and more companies are popping up every year. Millennial parents like myself are driving the market looking for family-friendly activities to play together. A highlight of gaming with toddlers is that they are perfectly happy playing the same game dozens of times (unlike many adult board gamers). We have only bought our son five games of his own and he still loves playing them. This post will briefly introduce these games and give you some ideas of what you might like.

Zitternix is one of our favorites. It is a simple dexterity game. Players attempt to pick wooden rods from a standing pile without knocking over the entire pile. It took our little guy a while until his fine motor control was enough that he can participate. Now he is an expert. There is a score-keeping system for the game which we ignore at the moment. We will start keeping score when it is time for him to learn basic addition.

I found Race to the Treasure browsing online and he calls it Ogre Game because of the box art. One common theme when it comes to gaming with very young children is to skip the official rules and make up your own. When we play we try to lay tiles on the board and connect the roads. The ogres continue their march to the treasure and now my son understands if the ogres reach the treasure we lose. If anyone draws an ogre tile he will shout “Oh no! Ogre!”

Funny Bunny is an extremely tactile piece of plastic. Players spin a large carrot to open holes in the play area, potentially trapping the rabbits. This is basically a toy for him. He is perfectly content to spin the carrot and drop rabbits down the holes. There have been attempts to play properly but they’ve all gone poorly.

Guess Who is an all-time classic, not really because it’s a great game but because it is ubiquitous. I would find it hard to believe any board gamer hasn’t played it at least once as a kid. I am simply continuing the tradition of flipping flaps of faces up and down. My son’s vocabulary is not enough yet to actually play, but he likes the flaps.

The last game I bought for my son is Digit although I knew buying it he would be unable to play it for a few years. I found it at a thrift store and it sat on the shelf for a long time. Recently we were bored and stuck inside so I pulled it out for us. I read the instructions for myself and was interested. After my son went to bed I played Digit using the provided rules and it turns out to be a fun enough puzzle game for adults. Although I technically bought it for my son, I’m claiming it for myself because of these five games it and Zitternix are the only two I would want to play by myself.