Family Game Night -

We love to play board games, card games, and dice games and when we head on vacation we ALWAYS have a bag filled with them as Family Game night is one of our favorite ways to stay connected on vacation.

We have learned that we need to make a few modifications along the way with games based on the age of our children and I will give you some of the tips we use for playing some of these games, but having games to play provide us lots of laughs, some friendly competition, and reigning champions that gloat the whole trip.

Here are a few of our favorite family game night games to play.

Dice Games

Tenzi-We noticed that this was one of the easiest games for our youngest to play as all she needed to be able to do was match the numbers on the dice racing to see who can get all 10 dice the same first. We always would let her start her first roll and determine which number she was going to go for based on the first roll and then we would all start rolling. This helped because it is hard for smaller hands to hold all 10 dice and be able to look and see what she had the most of. So that is an option for you and your family as well.

Flash-another fun game where you are going for Yahtzee type roles but the added fun of racing to get them first, flash dice which are the lucky count as anything, and then racing to grab the highest point tile to get higher points. This is a fast paced game with some skill as you need to be able to think and move quick.

CARD GAMES

Ruckus-this game is so much fun for all ages and even the younger ones can play. It is basically a matching game (like go fish) with the funniest drawings on them but the added bonus of being able to steal others matches. We have had so much fun playing this game over the years and it can get a little crazy with everyone yelling out silly names like “macho man” while grabbing the other players cards. Definitely one to try out if you haven’t already.

The Game-After playing a competitive game of cards it might be time to play as one where you are all trying to work together to beat the game. We recently got this and it is not as much fun for the older kids but my daughter who is 9 loves it. (She may not be as competitive as my boys). This is a game where you work together trying to get rid of all the cards by stacking them in ascending and descending order. When you read the instructions you’ll think oh this is going to be easy to beat but we have played it a few times and have yet to beat it. Gotten really close, but haven’t beat it yet. There isn’t much skill in it, but it is fun.

Spot it-This is such a fun game for all ages. Each card has a lot of designs on them and every single card has a matching design (I can’t imagine how they did that), but the goal is to try to get rid of your cards before everyone else does. When our daughter was younger, we would give her less cards than us, but never let her know this or she would have gotten upset with us.

Board Games

Ticket to Ride–this is one of my favorite of board games. I love it so much and would grab it every time to play if my kids would let me. It definitely takes strategy and you try to link trains across the countries trying to make specific routes. They do have a younger version Ticket to Ride First Journey which is for younger kids which is probably great as well, but we went for the older version.

Backgammon-You may have played this when you were younger and forgotten about it, but this is one that we always take with us and since it’s in a case, we fill it with the card and dice games so it becomes the storage place when we vacation. This is one that we all enjoy playing and creating a family tournament with.

Let me know what your favorite games are to play as a family as we are always looking for the next big game to enjoy.

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