Playing a board game as a family is a fun way to spend quality time together, even if your kiddos are quite young. As Kelsey Demers, cofounder of the site, the Tabletop Family, tells me, “It’s never too early to start engaging your children in games,” adding that little ones as young as 15 to 24 months will start to show an interest in them. Choosing games with short play times to match their natural attention spans is a good place to start and will ensure a smooth game night. Demers recommends allocating about two to three minutes per year of age they are so that the games don’t “overly tax their attention spans and end in frustration.” And just because they’re young doesn’t mean they can’t make strategic choices. “You want to look for games that provide age-appropriate strategy opportunities,” says Demers. “We want kids to learn that they have some say in what happens in their game.” Otherwise, the games won’t be engaging or teach them to think critically. Chidi Paige, a game designer and science educator, adds that preschoolers like doing things with their hands, so she recommends games that involve dexterity and a timed element as well.
My older son, Augie, has loved playing games since he was 2, and now that he’s 5, we’ve tried quite a few as a family. Whether cooperative or competitive, there’s a board (or card) game out there that will appeal to every toddler and preschooler. As Paige points out, “Every child is different. Understanding each child’s needs and interests is crucial in choosing the right games for them.” I rounded up a few of my personal favorites and also consulted gaming experts including Demers and Paige, as well as other parents (including Strategist staffers) for their recommendations to bring you the 15 best board games for kids aged 5 and under. (While most games provide age ranges, they’re merely suggestions — though you should be aware of small pieces that can be choking hazards for kids under 3.) If you’re looking for board games for kids older than 5, check out our roundup here.
Update on August 22, 2024: Added two new games; updated prices and checked stock for all products.
Best board games for ages 2 to 3 years old
Ages: 2+ | Play time: 10 minutes
Demers and Strategist senior editor Winnie Yang both love this game from German company Haba for first-time gamers. Designed for ages 2 and up, the cooperative game involves gathering fruit from trees and putting them in the basket before a hungry raven enters the orchard and eats them up first. The pieces are big and bright and great for small hands to move. Demers likes that it teaches children about taking turns, learning to lose, and also helps them practice their colors. “In fact, my kids love it when they lose because they find feeding the fruit to the raven so funny,” she says.
Ages: 2+ | Play time: 5-10 minutes
For the youngest gamers, Demers also recommends starting with this Haba game that involves fishing. A roll of the colored die tells each player which sea creature to “catch” using the magnetic fishing pole. If they catch it successfully, they get to place a corresponding puzzle piece into the puzzle board.
Ages: 3+ | Play time: 5-10 minutes
A Strategist favorite, this game is a great introduction to games for younger kids. (It’s one of the first ones my son played, too.) It includes logs, rubbery acorns, and a squirrel-shaped squeezer that’s used to pick the acorns up and place them in the logs. It teaches color matching, exercises fine motor skills, and requires strategic thinking. The game pieces are well made, too, making them a pleasure to handle.
Ages: 3+ | Play time: 5-10 minutes
Similar to the squirrel game above, this one involves gathering fruit from trees and placing them in buckets. But landing on a dog, bird, or spilled basket means that you’ll have to put some — or even all — of your fruit back. The fruit pieces are quite small and do require a bit of fine motor skills to pick up, but it’s good practice for little hands. You can also play competitively or cooperatively. This game is in my family’s rotation of games and is very easy for preschoolers to grasp. It also helps them practice counting.
Ages: 3+ | Play time: 20 minutes
“We love this game because it offers a fun, less intimidating way to learn chess,” says Paige. Incorporating characters, eight different stories, mini games, and activities, Story Time Chess introduces the game of chess to even the youngest of players in an engaging, easy-to-understand way. Paige’s daughter, who is 7, especially loves that the characters have names and faces. It also comes with a double-sided game board. “This versatility allows us to use the same game pieces to play chess (when we are ready),” says Paige.
Ages: 3-6+ | Play time: 10 minutes
Here’s a classic game of bingo geared toward children ages 3 to 6. My son immediately started playing this game with his cousins when he got it on his fifth birthday. It’s intuitive and engaging and requires minimal setup. The game comes with multiple options for play, including matching animals, letters, sight words, and numbers, so it can grow with your child as their reading ability develops. One caveat, however. There are tons of tiny pieces to keep track of, but each card comes with color-coded storage bags for easy cleanup.
Ages: 3+ | Play time: 5 minutes
This straightforward game is a favorite of Strategist senior writer Liza Corsillo’s 4-year-old niece. It’s easy to set up with an even simpler premise: Players take turns tapping out ice cubes with hammers without letting Phillip the Penguin fall down. It takes just a few minutes, making it ideal for young kids with shorter attention spans.
Best board games for ages 4 to 5 years old
Ages: 4+ | Play time: 5 minutes
Here’s another straightforward game that’s easy to learn and play right out of the box. A yeti is placed on a pile of plastic spaghetti noodles that players remove one by one without letting the yeti fall into the bowl. It’s fast-paced and silly, perfect for younger kids, and requires some agility to remove the strands without being too challenging. It’s a great, quick party game.
Ages: 4+ | Play time: 10-15 minutes
Zingo is a more advanced, fast-paced, bingo-based matching game that uses a dispenser that shoots out tiles. It’s another favorite of Chidi and her daughter, as it’s “quick and easy to learn,” especially if your kid already knows how to play bingo. Paige loves the cute images that she says are “fun and inviting,” and because it requires thinking fast, she also appreciates the dexterity aspect of the game, which she says keeps her daughter “constantly engaged and alert.”
Ages: 4+ | Play time: 15-20 minutes
This scavenger-hunt game will delight kids who love Richard Scarry’s Busytown universe. (It’s one of my son’s favorite games.) Players move different characters (including Lowly Worm and Hilda Hippo) along the path with the goal of getting them to Picnic Island before the pigs eat all of the food. Along the way, players help Goldbug find hidden objects around town (under a time constraint) by placing magnifying glass-shaped tokens on top of them. We love playing this as a family, as it’s fast-paced, exciting, and actually pretty challenging to locate the clues on the six-foot-long game board. While it looks like the Busytown version is currently unavailable, there’s a Disney-themed one that Paige loves to play with her family. “The timed scavenger hunt is engaging, and the race-against-time component increases excitement,” Paige says. “I like the cooperative aspect because it fosters team-building skills.”
Ages: 4+ | Play time: 15 minutes
Demers also loves this game from Peaceable Kingdom that involves working together to help owls fly back to their nest before the sun rises. For ages 4 and up, the game requires strategic thinking and planning ahead, as players choose which owl to move based on its position on the board. “The best part about this game is how kids will learn to strategically choose which owl to move based on how far it’ll move down the path,” says Demers. “If they’re only ever moving random owls, they’ll never win. It’s so fun to watch kids figure this out!”
Ages: 4+ | Play time: 20-30 minutes
This is another favorite of Demers, who says it’s great for 4- to 5-year-olds. The objective of the game is for the mice to gather as much cheese as possible while also escaping a cat. It comes with wooden pieces, including 18 mice with tails, cheese wedges and wheels, and a custom die. Player can opt to move their mice off the track to escape the cat, but will score fewer points in doing so. “There’s a lot of fun risk versus reward strategy for kids to explore if they want to — otherwise it’s just fun to run away from the cat!” explains Demers.
Ages: 4+ | Play time: 10 minutes
This cooperative game includes a memory component in which players uncover tokens that will send dinosaurs to safety. But they have to get there before the volcano erupts. It’s another favorite of ours because it moves fast and requires some strategy. Plus, the little dino toys and 3-D volcano pieces are fun for little kids to handle.
Ages: 5+ | Play time: 10-15 minutes
This was the first board game my son Augie played. Although it’s billed for ages 5 and up, he started playing this when he was about 2 (with assistance). It’s a great introduction to games, especially for car-obsessed kids. It’s a competitive game that involves racing cars on a colored track based on the rolling of dice. There are six colored dice, and all are thrown each turn. The colors that turn up on each one indicate which grid to move to next, but players have to be strategic about the order in which they move from color to color. It involves a fair amount of strategy and thinking ahead, but even younger kids can pick it up quickly. Augie loves choosing the color of his wooden car and assigning colors to me and my husband. It’s also quite exciting to throw six dice at once into the box.
Ages: 5+ | Play time: 20 minutes
Yang also loves this game for older kids; it’s one she started playing with her daughter when she was 4. (My son loves this one, too.) A cooperative game, it involves placing keys and an ogre snack on a grid, then building a path to the treasure before the ogre gets there first. “It’s great for learning turn-taking, reading numbers and letters in a table format, and strategizing about how to lay the path pieces to pick up the key tokens and reach the treasure,” says Yang. “And because there’s a little randomization to it, it doesn’t get overly repetitive or boring to play.” It’s the perfect length for a preschooler or kindergartener, too, lasting just long enough to hold their interest. Yang also likes that the pieces are sturdy, not too small or too numerous, and rules that are “simple enough that you don’t have to relearn them every time you pull out the game (or stop mid-game to figure out what happens next).”
Ages: 5+ | Play time: 10 minutes
Another game of balance and dexterity, Rhino Hero involves building a skyscraper out of cards while trying to move Rhino Hero up the floors without toppling it over. My son loves playing this game at bedtime, as it moves pretty quickly but also requires some patience. I like that it’s a compact game that includes only cards and a small wooden rhino token, making it easy to pack for a trip or day out.
Ages: 5+ | Play time: 10-15
If you want to level up a bit and introduce actual mathematics to your child through a game, check out Sum Swamp, an addition and subtraction game designed for kindergarteners that Strategist senior editor Jen Trolio recommends. Her younger daughter plays it at school, and it involves getting swamp creatures through the mire without getting stuck by rolling three dice — two numbered ones and another with plus and minus signs — to create a math problem. The answer indicates how many spaces to move.
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