Here we go! This new series may be for you, someone you know, or not for you at all; all of which are just fine. I plan on writing an article one or two times a month on the different games Ryker and I are playing. I suspect he will need a few shelves on the Kallax by the end of the year!
I’m currently at a time in my life where it is hard to get the games that I truly want to play to the table as often as I want because our kids take most of our energy and time that it’s impossible to play that meaty 2-3 game after they’re finally in bed. With that said, we’re now entering a new phase where my oldest who just turned 4, Ryker, now understands the basic skills needed to play a game, so we are starting to play some actual board games together! When he turned 2 and then 3 we played our share of HABA games (we’ll talk more about this AMAZING company later) and they were great activities for the kids to learn and practice important skills like patience, taking turns, rolling a die, and lots and lots of matching. I noticed that Ryker had started to “perfect” a lot of these skills as he neared 4, so I started to push the limit a little with the age recommendations on some games to see if he would be able to handle them. The following, is our journey into….
4 YEAR OLD BOARD GAMING!
Before I chat about the games, I want to discuss something I discovered on BGG with regards to many 3+ games. They are all rated very low. The first game I discuss below for instance, is a 4.1. Many of the comments are “there’s no decision making” and “it’s all random.” Well folks, for a 3 year old, that’s probably all that they can handle, and all that you would probably want them to do. It’s about the experience of playing something within a loose structure and just a few rules, which are more like guardrails. It’s about learning to take turns, or to not throw the die across the room. It’s about staying focused for 5+ minutes. I don’t really understand many of the comments to be honest, because it’s not like your going to sit your kid down to a game of On Mars and say, let’s go kid! I’m also not expecting to see the rating be a 9.6, but when you pull something up on BGG (which we know we all do) and you see the rating in red, you may just shy away from it without knowing how great it can be for your kid!
Pete the Cat’s Groovy Button Game (3+)
The first game on the docket today is Pete the Cat’s Groovy Button Game. I purchased this at Barnes and Noble before a road trip to visit a family and their kids. We never got to play it on that trip, because, you know how trips with kids go, but we have played it a few times now at home. It is based off of the book, which is a huge hit in our house, and is rated at 3+ which I think is appropriate. You essentially move around the board either picking up buttons to put in your collection or losing buttons by depositing buttons onto Pete’s shirt from your own collection. Halfway around the board you are able to make a choice to keep going down the normal path, or cut across to Pete’s shirt with the chance to collect all of the buttons on the shirt. But watch out, there are spaces that have you switch your collection of buttons with the other player(s)! You move across the board by spinning a spinner and each space tells you how many buttons you collect or if you switch collections. When the buttons from the supply have all run out, the game is over!
Ryker did great playing the game and really enjoyed it. He knows the “theme” of the game so he was instantly interested. He waited patiently to take his turn and eagerly counted out his movement steps from the spinner. He chose to take the gamble and take the alternate path to Pete’s shirt and he actually landed on the one spot that rewarded him with all of Pete’s buttons! It’s a gamble because that path is littered with “negative” spots that require you to deposit buttons onto Pete’s shirt.
The game teaches a really important lesson in my opinion – its ok for you to lose things, or have negative points. Kids are always concerned with winning or getting all the things. This game takes the lesson from the book of “Did Pete cry, goodness no! Buttons come and buttons go. Pete kept on singing his song.” This is SUCH a good lesson to reinforce. He also thought that the switching of each of our Button collection was funny and didn’t mind that at the very end we switched, resulting in him not winning the game.
Yahtzee Jr.: Spidey and his Amazing Friends Edition (4+)
The next game I’d like to review is one that my wife picked up for Christmas: Yahtzee Jr: Spidey and his Amazing Friends Edition. This is the same Yahtzee that you have inevitably played before, but themed with the super fun Spidey and friends version – Spidey, Spin (Miles), Ghost Spider (Spider Gwen), Ms. Marvel, Black Panther and Green Goblin. It plays exactly like the Yahtzee I’d imagine (I’ve actually never played Yahtzee before in my adult life…..), except instead of matching numbers, you match the character symbol on the dice. One of the 6 dice has Green Goblin on it, and can’t be rerolled.
This was another hit with Ryker because he loves the characters. He picked up really quickly on the fact that he got one initial roll and then two re-rolls with as many dice as he wanted. He even pivoted to a different character a few times after the first re-roll!
Overall, I enjoyed this “re-skin” of the game to make it more “kid friendly.” Ryker asked for it specifically by name multiple days in a row, so it’s a hit for him! What I didn’t like was that the dice required me to place stickers on all 6 sides! I get that this reduces the cost, but how much more is it really to have the dice printed? It was just a little annoying and I know that eventually these sticker are going to fall off after a few plays, or if Rykers sister Sloan gets a hold of them!
My First Carcassone (4+)
The last game for this first article is My First Carcassonne. Carcassonne is a big hit in our family. It was the first game that Rachel and Never bought together and we most recently broke it out before New Years and played an epic 256 tile game in which she utterly annihilated me! Needless to say, we need to make sure Ryker learns to play this game so he can join in the family baettles!
My First Carcassonne is similar to the OG in the sense that there are meeples and tiles, its just that you aren’t making the decisions as to where to place our meeples, the tile tells you. You select one of the four player colors to start and then take turns placing them to create the city of Carcassonne. The tiles have zero, one or two followers of them, always on roads. Once you complete a road by ending it, all of the followers on that road get meeples of the corresponding color placed on them. So there is some strategy in terms of putting some of your followers on the same road as your opponent if they have a lot on a particular road since they’ll be incentivized to close the road off. The first person to place all of their meeples on the board is the winner.
This one took Ryker a little time to grasp since it was abstract in the sense that there wasn’t a board to directly place things on, we create the board by playing. It took until the end of the game, but he picked up on it good enough. The tiles are XL when compared to the OG and the meeples are quite a bit larger as well, making them perfect for the smaller hands of a 4yo. This one didn’t have a theme that Ryker immediately recognized, but he liked all of the different game pieces and the chance to pick his own tile every turn. The game actually ended in a tie since the road that closed had both of our last meeples in it! I’m looking forward to getting this one to the table more over the next year and then slowing working out way into playing the real thing – just without fields!
Well, that’s our story so far. I have a bunch more games lined up to “review” so be on the lookout! What games have you played with your little ones? What do they ask to play?
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