Two great things about it: (a) no waiting for turns (OK, this makes it the opposite of the civilized Candy Land model, but even grownups can enjoy a game where there’s no waiting for your time to come again); (b) once kids understand what they need to do (and they seem able to do this at about 4 or 5), they can and often do beat the pants off their elders, who are often slower and less mentally flexible.

As mentioned, the first part of the game is somewhat random, but what made the difference between a winner and an also-ran was what did the program do in response to a positive result.

This article helps to inform my heretofore unexamined reluctance to play such “roll and move” games now that I have grandkids. I hadn’t really thought about what the games did for/to the kids, I just knew it was crushingly boring to me.

That’s a blanket dismissal of a rich and diverse form of entertainment that is enjoyed by millions.

A point well taken. I am only stating my own preferences here, in reference to the comparison in the post of board games and video games. The suggestion is that video games are a richer experience and teach more complex skills, which hasn’t been my experience.

- Using grids and grid coordinates.
- Drawing grids.
- Finding flat slate stones to scratch a grid onto (in Wales, there’s always plenty of slate, especially in mining towns).
- Agreeing on the grid size (requires judgement of how long you want the game to be, and negotiation).
- Agreeing on the fleet (requires judgement of how crowded you want the board to be, and again, negotiation).
- Placing my fleet based on what I know of the game (don’t place ships together, or someone
- Placing my fleet based on what I know of my opponent’s prior strategies.
- Using initials for the ships: we laughed when we realised that althought we’d just picked the letters “A, B, C, D”, we had unconsciously started calling them Aircraft carrier, Battleship, Cruiser, Destroyer.
- Trusting your opponent not to change the positions.

Compare this range or activities, processes and skills to hangman, where all I learned was what a vowel was, and to suggest letters in the order eaioutnshrdl (vowels with e first, then “tan’s hurdle”). A game with no strategy whatever.

Compare it to noughts and crosses (tic tac toe) – that’s trivial.

Compare it to dots-and-boxes. That has some depth, but most of the real depth is beyond the computational ability of most people.

I can’t speak for the plasticky boardgame, but Battleships has earned its place as the best of the paper-and-pen games. You can play it in a car, on a hillside, pretty much anywhere two flat surfaces can be hidden from each other.

He loved it, and picked up the rules real fast. He wasn’t interested in figuring out who had won, but he liked following the rules and moving the pieces.

Yamara above suggested Puerto Rico for kids. I might also suggest San Juan, a simplified version of Puerto Rico played almost entirely with cards. Since the cards in your hand represent what you build, and your currency to build it with, it requires constant trade-off decisions and future planning. We plan on playing it with our son when he’s a bit older. (He’s a week old, so we’re still working on teaching him the old “Eating and Pooping Game.”)

K

Yes I tried to learn to play the Cajon, but the technique was difficult to master and I didn’t have the time, so I stopped the lessons.

I guess that means percussion instruments offer very little to music.

There are plenty of games that a parent won’t get bored playing with a kid, that only need two people (Clue and Catan and Apples to Apples fail here), and that the kid has a chance of winning.

For little ones (no reading needed):

Second the rec for Rat-a-tat Cat. It’s a form of poker with adorable rat and feline graphics for the preschool set. And older; my kids STILL like playing it.

Any memory game. Ravensberger had a nice Madeline one, but you can also find ones tied into pop culture. My kids ended up with a Dragon Tales version.

Blink: a rapid-fire card game: match color, symbol, or number of objects to get rid of the cards in your hand. Like the game “Spit”.

I Spy: cards with pictures taken from the “I Spy” books. There are clue cards telling you what objects to “spy”.

Trouble, chinese checkers, checkers, Clue Jr. are classics that make the cut. Also battleship, because you can put your battleship so that one peg is suspended over the letters or numbers, making it unsinkable. This trick works exactly once per player.

For kids who can read/add:

Stare: You have 30 seconds to stare at a work of art before being quizzed about it.

Can’t Stop: best gambling game ever. Secretly teaches probability theory.

Avoid at all costs: Monopoly Jr. Same mind-numbing deterministic gameplay as Candyland, but for kids who are old enough to be able to make decisions on their own. At least with Candyland, I could stack the deck so that my kid would win at lightning speed.

You know, for a really old-school time that actually has strategy in it if you think about it for a minute: Connect Four.

(Sorry if this game has already been mentioned…I haven’t read every single post here).

Anyway, you’d be surprised how deep the gameplay can get when you just cross tic-tac-toe with gravity. First you start setting up victories where you just get 4 in a row. Then you start setting up victories where your opponent’s block gives you 4 in a row. Then you start setting up victories where your opponent’s block of your setting up a condition where their block would mean you win, then you win. And so on…all the while _defending_ against your opponent doing the same thing.

Fun!

On the other hand, for my three year old daughter it taught taking turns, colors, storytelling (we had things happen that explained moving) and being a good winner/loser.

These are not strategic things she learned, but they are valuable lessons nonetheless. I can’t wait for her to grow to play more complex games (she does some on the computer) but at the least she is learning something playing candyland.

I just wish I didn’t have to play with her!

The only games I would play with him were 3-D chess and backgammon, which I usually won.

Yes I tried to learn to play the Cajon, but the technique was difficult to master and I didn’t have the time, so I stopped the lessons.

So you think if I played these games even longer, although they were no fun at all for me, I would eventually discover their value? Like they might teach me to play the drums or something? You may be right, but I prefer a game that’s fun to play. And I’m sure that the best way to learn to play percussion is to play percussion.

Sure, your too-old children don’t like age-inappropriate games. Shocker! Neither do mine. My 6-year-old likes Catan and Carcassonne: aren’t I the great dad? But my 6-year-old also likes to play War with face cards, and has become recently enamored with Solitare (with real cards, not that escape-from-the-corporacy computer thing). The real treat, so far as he’s concerned, is to play 52-card-pickup. I kid you not.

Kids enjoy stuff that makes parents want to claw their eyes out because kids are still developing, growing, immature little sacks of meat and we are all evolved and developed. What thrills them bores us. The point of Candyland, then, isn’t to teach ‘em anything, but to give them something they enjoy.

Because (some) little kids enjoy it. It’s *supposed* to be contentless pap: it’s called CANDYland. It lets kids brains take a vacation because sometimes they, just like you, want to veg out for a while. You watch “Biggest Loser” or something and they play Candyland. The game persists because it is fun (for 2 year olds), not because it is somehow valuable.

Hmmm. All that repetitious banging. And like I said, I tried it and didn’t get into it so I doubt there’s really anything of value there.

You need some games that boil down to luck in order to allow kids of very different abilities to play together and have a somewhat equal chance of winning. That makes it fun.

Beyond that, contrary to what several earlier commenter remarked, there is more to Monopoly than mere chance. The strategies are fairly rudimentary, but if you wheel and deal with other players, you can actually exercise some skill.

[1] playing with a discard pile face up so that players can choose between a known card or a random card

[2] allowing players to keep a hand of cards (three or four) from which they choose the best card to play

[3] have players keep their next card face up in front of them and allow players to steal it for their own use

I have been a big fan of Wizards of the Coast’s “start simple and add rules” method for teaching Magic the Gathering. I think the same can be done with any game, including Candy Land.

Sorry is fun again and kids make decisions.

However, Battleship teaches a variety of skills. If you’re playing randomly, you’ll lose to someone who thinks before making a guess. There are strategies to use based on which ships have yet to be found and what the exposed parts of the board show. It also can introduces kid to x/y notation (if you introduce it that way instead of Bingo notation). X/y notation alone is worth the price of admission as they’ll see it later on in algebra class.

The key thing about children’s games is to remember that they’re for children so the lessons they teach should be simple enough for the child to figure out without the parent pointing it out. As a parent, it’s tough to see that what’s trivial to us can be hard the first time around. If a child never learns that there are better strategies than guessing at Battleship then they either didn’t play enough games or they’re not very good pattern spotters. If it’s the later, they can always grow up and write dismissive articles on Boing Boing.

So, while I agree with your observations (I’ve noticed these “classic” games of yore are pretty much a dead-end — there is a reason we stopped playing them when we were 8) there is a strategy better than random for grid games like this.

That is, a clever human should always do better than a pseudo-random guess by a (say) a computer — even if the computer program was then smart enough to try and find the rest of the ship once it scored a hit.

I can recommend a really great game that offers a lot of fun for even young kids, and can grow with them: Set. It teaches basic set theory without hitting you over the head, and can be modified for various skill levels so it grows as the kids do. Highly recommended.

Tile-placing games like Carcassonne are lots of fun for school-age kids, too, especially the simpler ones like The Castle and The City.

Both are relatively easy to learn but can be much more complex depending on the intelligence of the players. Both can involve deep strategizing and both depend on the player’s ability to remember everything that is going on.

I never understood why every kid in college owned a copy of Monopoly, but no one had Clue. Even with all the “serious” board games available, I still play it regularly.

And Stratego is almost like chess and poker had a baby.

I would also suggest Rummikub for young kids (not so young they eat the pieces though).