My son's 5th birthday is coming up and I would like to gift him a board game. Usually only the two of us play and he likes for example Carcassonne Junior, Brandon the Nrave or Karuba Junior. Any good suggestions for a new game, maybe also something collaborative?
My recommendations would be karak as an introduction to dungeon crawlers, ice cool for dexterity, stone age junior for the memory advantage of kids and king domino as the next step
Yes, my son started at 5 1/2 but you could go lower, since it is coop, you play with the children and can help them. It‘s also a good entry to counting. Dice roll + weapon strength etc.
These were all mentioned already, but Dragonomino, Rhino Hero, and Animal Upon Animal are pretty good. We’ve had fun with Dinosaur Escape Game and Busy Busy Bake Shop as well (but they skew a little younger, maybe).
They take the approach that games that are designed to teach fail at being fun and fail st teaching because no one wants to play them. But games that are designed to be fun can actually provide some teaching (not that you were necessarily asking about education, but I think it’s a good take either way).
CoraQuest is a fun kid-friendly cooperative dungeon crawl that my 6yo and I really enjoy. (Edit): Rereading, I forgot the part about your kid turning five, so this may be a bit advanced.
Outfoxed! (2014) has been mentioned several times and I also recommend it. It's a cooperative, clue-esque deduction game.
I've tried compiling all the suggestions from this thread, with BGG links.
I have a 4 and 6¾-year-old, but our game collection doesn't quite fit the audience, and we usually end up playing Star Of Africa with heavily dumbed-down house rules (and it's already a pretty dumb game to begin with) to keep it interesting for the little one.
I’ll second Rhino Hero! For collaboration, my kids have enjoyed Outfoxed, Race for the Treasure and Robot Turtles.
I found that maybe 4-5 was way more about focusing on following rules and heavily house ruling to make a suitable experience so we could play whatever on the shelf looked interesting.
Once they got just a little bit older Battle Sheep, Hive, Azul, and Camel Up got worn out.
Our kids loved the offerings from Orchard Games in preschool, kindergarten and early primary. Some are available in French as well as English.
They are definitely ECD-informed and target specific development points, but the kids loved them and they definitely made them table top gamers.
There was one that was a pick your route game called ‘Round and Round’ where you sang ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ each time a stop was reached. I don’t see it listed currently. It’s not the same as Orchard’s counting game called ‘Bus Stop’ which is also popular.
We don’t play many junior versions, I find my boy outgrew them very quickly - though he still likes Catan Junior.
He likes Mancala, Kingdomino isn’t hard to pick up, and it really helped his maths skills. His favourite is the normal Carcassonne (we don’t play fields, and I give him a 50 point headstart, so it’s still a challenge for me). He loves the Dragon expansion, too.
We play Rhino Hero and other dexterity games, I ordered one for next Christmas called Menara - off a recommendation here (!) - it looks like a coop dexterity tower building game.
As for collaborative games, he loves helping me with some solos, Under Falling Skies, Aerion and Nautilion for example - you can tell a story and get them to help throw the dice.
Not really a game, but story cubes are also a win at bedtime.
When my kids were about that age we would play piggy back brigade. Fun little racing game with cute pigs. Easy enough for kids to pick up and fun for adults too.
My First Stone Age is phenomenal for young kids. The memory element even gives them something they can beat the parents at. We loved it! My kiddo is 11 now and won't let me get rid of it because of all the good memories.
Might be a little young but I got my son (at 8yo) the Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Begins Game. You don't need a DM. We laugh our asses off playing it.
My soon-to-be four year-old loves Sushi Go and we love playing it with her. She mostly just picks the cute cards and doesn’t win much, but games go fast and my wife and I have fun.
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