We are all about teaching our kids (and others) to play games. But how do you teach skills that are integral to good game-playing: concepts like logical deduction, planning ahead, and making strategic choices? With games, of course! We highlight our top 5 games to teach game-playing skills.

Games we’ve been playing:

Purrrlock Holmes: Furriarty’s Trail

Kingdomino (update: Kingdomino did win Spiel des Jahres this year!)

Macroscope

Sushi Go Party!

Bärenpark

Catan Junior

Mall Madness Littlest Pet Shop Edition (ugh)

Cube Quest

Rummikub

Rack-O

More from the Klutz book – 3D tic-tac-toe, Mancala, an asymmetric game called Dalmatian Pirates and the Volga Bulgars (variation on the ancient Fox and Geese)

Lots of Dance Central 3 – we’ve created a dancing monster! Gangam Style, in particular, has been played so many times, we feel like we’ve gone back in time to 2012.

Andrew bought the DLC for Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Awesome: Hero’s Path Mode (highlights the map for where you’ve played) Less awesome: Trial of the Sword. 45 levels, with only your wits and whatever equipment you can find within the trial. So hard!

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Games To Teach Game Skills

Common elements in our favorite teaching games: Hidden information or poorly-hidden information. Little math. Simple strategy.

* Purrrlock Holmes Furriarty’s Trail: Semi-cooperative; give clues to each other’s secret information. Use this to teach logical/deductive reasoning.

* Castle Panic: Cooperative gameplay to defeat the monsters. Use this to model how to plan ahead.

* Battle Sheep: competitive, but with no hidden information. Can still talk through how to plan ahead.

* Press Here, The Game: semi-competitive pattern game. Teach pattern-recognition as well as planning ahead. A small element of strategy since there are usually several “good” spots to place your colored dot.

* Bärenpark (or Patchwork): competitive, but no direct interaction between players, and no hidden information. Teach planning ahead, both to fit pieces and to possibly block out other player(s) from resources.

 

Do you have a game that you prefer for teaching game skills? Tell us in the comments!

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