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Becky S. Hayden's avatar

Hardly a day goes by without us playing a game here, in fact I just wrote about how we pick games that are a good fit for us! We like many of the games you listed but a few other favorites are Canvas (creative AND strategic, and you get to combine clear cards to make paintings with names like verbose happiness, and you can bring just the cards to share with friends who don't want to play the whole game), Pyramid Arcade (a bunch of different games from simple to complex played with delightful rainbow pyramids), Hive (strategic, quick, extremely portable, fun to notice the similarities and differences wrt chess), Bloomchasers (spatial reasoning, building an awesome tree together, a little bit of dexterity), and Project L (polyominos!). I don't think of myself as a games person but my kids love them and they're slowly converting me.

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Caity's avatar

Love, love, love that you are elevating board and card games! They have sooooooo many benefits for kids and adults of all ages, and there is truly a type game for everyone. They’re also a great mode of connection for parents who don’t love to play pretend with their kiddos, but still want to be playful together. Thanks for all of these awesome recommendations!

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🧠 90% by Five's avatar

I love how you framed games as a way to build connection, not just kill time. I’ve been writing about how tech is reshaping play and relationships in early childhood, and this gave me hope that the simple magic of a card game still holds strong. Thank you for sharing this! 💛

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Kate Josephine Johnson's avatar

We own over half of these.

Awesome list.

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Kelly Gancas's avatar

I grew up playing gin rummy, uno, and boggle, and now we like to play Dutch blitz! We also love backgammon and usually do a tiered tournament bracket.

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Anne Brown's avatar

Kids LIKE to have fun. Sometimes I'm doubtful, but the complaining about not having a screen sometimes needs some repeated experiences of actual fun playing in other ways to be convincing. Love the idea of sending simple games to camp! ❤

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