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I have fond memories of my childhood and playing games with my parents. Certain game stick in my mind (frustration, buckaroo and hungry hippos amongst others) and I love playing games with my own children now. As I’ve written before, the children are quite ‘low tech’ so games consoles and tablets haven’t been asked for, instead, they’re asked for games.
We have such a good selection of games now, and I thought I’d share some of our favourite ones here for those looking to invest in some good family games this Christmas. This post contains affiliate links (hence the ‘Ad’ marking as per ASA guidelines. My full disclosure policy can be found here.
Bingo Games
First up has to be the bingo games we have. There’s a wide selection to choose from and we have four of them so far, Bug, Bird, Ocean and Monkey. Not only are they great family games, they’re truly beautiful games too. They’re presented in a beautiful white box with the most stunning illustrations. We have lots of fun playing these together and I can never fail to be amazed at how quickly the younger children can find the creature if they have it on their bingo card.
This is a good Christmas day game as it enables everyone to play and requires no skill – it’s total pot luck.
Quick Games
Another series of games we really like are the Haba games. We have built up quite a collection of these over the last two years and all three children enjoy playing these. Some of our favourites are ‘Pea Counting‘, Little Fox, Dino World and The Orchard. They’re all fairly quick to play and even H was able to join in last year at just 2.5 years old. They are also good travel game as the boxes are quite small so don’t take up much space in cases.
Matching Games
Emma really loves matching games that rely on memory; I like them less so as I can never win! Some of our favourite ones include some of the Orchard toys range – Penguin Pairs being a particular favourite. She also really likes the Butterfly Wings matching game (you have to match the outside and inside wings of each butterfly). We also enjoy the match a leaf game where you match each tree to its leaf – it’s really good and has helped us a lot with our tree knowledge!
For slightly younger children we have been enjoying two matching games that Gibsons games sent us – Superhero City memory and Sweet Dreams Memory. Both are beautifully illustrated and the tiles are well made so stand up to smaller hands. We really like the superhero city one and finding the different characters and it’s probably Harry’s favourite memory game to play.
Other general games
Other games that have proven a long-standing hit include Dobble – a fun card game that I enjoy playing with the children a lot. Counting Caterpillars by Orchard Toys is one we have had for a few years now and we all still enjoy playing this game. Harry has asked for a Peppa Pig game so I need to find a good one for him, and Emma has asked for some games. I think we are going to look to get here Match a pair of birds, Match a track and I saw it first Jungle (which I’ve seen reviewed by BookBairn and have had my eye on for a while) .
Are there any other family games that you can recommend that we should be looking to add to our collection?
