My kids are almost two years old, and I’ve gone through all the board games we have that are meant for toddlers to play in this series. So this series is coming to a close, but that’s a good thing because it means my kids will be playing games by the actual rules soon! With this final post, I wanted to talk about how my boys “play” board games now that they can go into our game room.

My boys love playing board games, and they’ll often point to the game room and ask to play games. When we go in, I let them each pick out one game to play with, and try to make sure that they put it away before picking out another game. We also made sure that our more rare/expensive games are out of reach, so we don’t mind if they mess up game components.

We received a free copy of Rhino Hero Junior from HABA when my toddlers were 20 months, and I let them unbox and unpunch it. The game comes with a lot of thick cardboard pieces, which my kids loved punching out. One also enjoys putting the pieces back into the punchboard, so I’ve saved some punchboard for that.

by Ambie Valdés

Click Clack Lumberjack is a dexterity game where you’re trying to tap plastic tree pieces with a plastic axe in order to knock bark pieces off without knocking the cores off. It’s a game that I’ve enjoyed playing mostly with other adults before I had kids. Currently, my kids aren’t old enough to be playing a dexterity game like this (it’s for ages 5 and up), but they love playing with the pieces and it’s one of the first games that my kids pick to play when they go into the game room.

Building Site is a memory game where you’re gathering materials in the correct order to build a house. There’s a little toy dump truck that you move around to collect the pieces, and the house is made up of little wooden blocks.

by Ambie Valdés

Hungry as a Bear is a dexterity game where you feed different colored cardboard food tokens to a Bear. There’s a big cardboard plate and spoon that you use, and the bear stands up in the box and has a cut out mouth like a carnival game.

by Ambie Valdés

Tidy Up! Is a game where you have cardboard squares representing different types of toys - stuffed animals, vehicles, or blocks. The box itself has a storage shelf of cardboard with slots in it, so you take a piece and put it into the correct slot to match the type of toy.

by Ambie Valdés

Go Away Monster! Is a game where you take turns drawing cardboard shapes out of a bag and placing them into your bedroom. But if you get a monster, you say “go away monster” and put it to the side (or throw it across the room). There’s shape matching in placing the pieces, and older children start learning how to differentiate the shapes by feel.

by Ambie Valdés

Teddy’s Colors and Shapes has boards with different cut out shapes and wooden pieces of different shapes and colors. You roll a die that’s either a color or a shape (depending on which mode you’re playing) and then get one of those colors or shapes and place them into a corresponding cut out. 

by Ambie Valdés

Here, Fishy, Fishy! Is a game that uses the box to hold different colored wooden fish with magnets in them. You roll a colored die and use a fishing rod to get that fish, and then you place a matching colored cardboard piece in your scoreboard, trying to fill it with all the colors.

by Ambie Valdés

First Orchard is a cooperative game where you’re trying to get all the fruit of four different colors into the basket before the crow reaches the end of the path. Each turn you roll a die and put that color fruit into the basket. If the basket is rolled you get to choose the color, and if a crow is rolled you move the crow. It’s good for learning colors and simple strategy with the choosing of the colors.