Related: Forget Candyland! This Is the Best List of Board Games for All Ages 21 Awesome Preschool Board Games That You’ll Love, Too Instead of reconnecting and laughing together, you’ll be anxious for the game to end, leaving your kid to wonder why you don’t want to play with her. You’ll be bored out of your skull, and your preschooler will pick up on that. In our family, we play a board game nearly every night, and we even cleared out our pantry in the kitchen to devote to storing our family board games.īoard games and card games are one of the best ways you can connect with your kids after a busy day, but if you play a mind-numbing game like Chutes & Ladders, it can have the opposite effect. It’s just that Candyland and its ilk have infiltrated the mainstream psyche as the quintessential board games for preschoolers, so you don’t hear about most of the awesome preschool board games that you’ll actually enjoy playing with your kid. Over the years, we’ve discovered that the world has a ton of absolutely delightful preschool board games to offer families. It ain’t pretty, but it should give you some idea of how nuts we are about board games…and now I’m realizing we still need to donate our copy of Candyland! They’re all chance and no thought, and at best they prepare your kid to understand the concept of a lottery ticket.Īnd yet as much as I’d love to groom my preschooler into a ruthless Scrabble whiz, some of the best family games are just too advanced to be board games for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds. Those typical preschool board games require little to no strategy. The people who invented Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, and Hi Ho Cherry-O must have had some deep-seated hatred for parents of the world because playing those preschool board games will slowly kill off every brain cell that sleep deprivation hasn’t already taken care of.

The games specifically designed for preschoolers are kind of… soul-sucking. My preschooler’s absolute favorite time of day is after her little sister goes to bed at night because that’s when we bust out a board game or card game to play as a family. Inside: Forget those boring preschool board games like Candyland and play these educational and fun board games for preschoolers instead.

Learning games for 3 year olds free