Family Game Night Ideas Your Whole Family Will Love

Family game nights are a great way to spend quality time with your family. In this post, we are sharing our curated list of games for your next family game night.

When planning a family game night, consider choosing a game or activity that will appeal to all ages. For younger children, playing games teaches your kids important skills like listening, taking turns, and working together. As your children get older, games are still a great way to shut down the screens for a while and bring everyone together. If you have a range of ages in your family, mix it up each time to make sure you have something that each child will love in the rotation. We have broken down our lists by age to help you find the best fit for your family.

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Family Game Night with Toddlers and Preschoolers

Playing games with the little ones in your family can be a fun and educational. Games teach important skills like taking turns, counting, working together, and so much more. When choosing games for your toddler or preschooler, here are a few things to consider.

• Choose games that don’t take too much time. We all know that the littles are super busy, so pick an something that is long enough to hold their interest, but not so long that you have to force them to stay.
• Give your child options. Place a few games out on the table and let your child choose which one they want to play. Narrowing down their options in advance helps you control the time it will take while still giving them input.
• Eliminate distractions. Turn off the TV or tablet and clear the space of extra toys to help your child focus on playing the games.
• Let your child lead. Once your child knows how to play the game, let them tell everyone the rules before you start or decide who gets to go first.
• Don’t stress. If you relax and have fun, chances are your child will, too. Don’t worry if things don’t go exactly according to plan. The important thing is that you are enjoying the time together.

Classic Games

Who doesn’t love the classics? When I first had kids, I was so happy to find that some of the same games I used to love as a kid were still available. All of these games are easy to find and will certainly bring back some memories when you start to teach your child how to play.

• Candy Land is great for helping kids to learn their colors. It’s easy to play and fun for all ages.
• Chutes and Ladders helps with counting skills and has some twists and turns that make it a little more challenging.
• Memory helps with focus and concentration. You can adjust the difficulty of this game by starting with just a few matches on the table. As your child gets better at the game, you can add more cards to make it more challenging.
• Don’t Break the Ice helps with hand eye coordination and problem solving. It’s quick and easy to play and can be played over and over in the same sitting.
• Ants in the Pants helps with fine motor skills and is challenging for the whole family. We modified this one when our kids were really little and let them toss the ants in the pants until they were able to flick the ants correctly.
• Don’t Spill the Beans is also great for fine motor skills. The newer version has slightly larger beads than what we had as kids. You still want to watch the very little ones carefully to make sure they don’t put them anywhere they don’t belong.

Games for on the Go

You never know then an opportunity for a family game night might come up. Here are some of our favorite games that fit in a purse or small backpack. We take them on vacation, on airplanes, to restaurants, or anywhere we know we might have some downtime to fill.

• Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza is a fast-paced game that is fun for the whole family. Acting out the movements for each card will keep everyone engaged and laughing.
• Eye Found It is similar to i Spy. It’s a great quiet game to play while waiting for dinner at a restaurant or keeping busy waiting for an appointment.
• Spot It is another great one to keep in your purse or bag. Each player flips over a card and everyone races to find the match.
• Happy Salmon has a mixture of word play and charades. You can play it in minutes for a night with limited time or play multiple rounds on a family game night.

New Family Favorite Games

• Square is a great matching game. Each person gets a set of squares and races to create a face that matches the card shown.
• Gooey Louie is so gross it’s fun. Kids love to pull boogers out of Louie’s nose and hope they aren’t the one to make his brain pop out.
• Shark Bite helps with fine motor skills and is easy to assemble and play. Players roll the dice and take turns fishing the fish out of the shark’s mouth hoping they don’t get bit!
• Pop the Pig is great for colors and counting. Roll the dice and feed the pig until he pops.
• The Sneaky, Snacky, Squirrel Game supports fine motor and color matching and is easy enough for the littles to play.

Cooperative Play Games

Cooperative play games are perfect to play when your child is still learning. The whole family works together to win and can help each other throughout. These games are perfect for nights when we just want everyone to get along and aren’t looking for a competition.

• Snug as a Bug In a Rug supports learning colors, counting, numbers and shapes. It also gives you the opportunity to talk about size.
• Friends and Neighbors: The Helping Game helps you talk with your child about emotions and recognizing them in others.
• Hoot Owl Hoot! combines color matching with a little strategy as you and your child help get all of the owls back to their nest before the sun comes up.
• Monkey Around is great for very active kids or days when your child just has the wiggles. It’s the perfect game for toddlers to work on their gross motor and coordination skills.
• Race to the Treasure requires families to make decisions together about where to place the bath to beat the Ogre.
• Feed the Woozle has different levels of play so you can adjust it to fit the needs of your family. It helps with fine motor and counting skills.

As a former teacher, the Peaceable Kingdom store is my go-to for fun, educational games for little kids. Check out this page for more ideas for games that are great for toddlers and this one for preschoolers.

Family Game Night with 5-12 Year Olds

The great thing about playing games with elementary-aged kids is that, at this age, they are really starting to understand the rules. You can play more complicated games and extend the game play a little longer than with younger children. Family game nights are helping you bond with your child and is also teaching them important critical thinking skills that will help them in school. Here are some tips for choosing games for this age group.

• Find the right time. Choose a time when your child is able to focus on the game and have fun. When kids are in school all day, they often need time to decompress after they get home. Trying to start a game before they have had a chance to relax could make the process more stressful than fun.
• Play games multiple times. As the rules get more complicated, you may need to play a game multiple times before everyone understands the rules. Consider working together with your child the first couple of times they play a new game before you make it more competitive.
• Add prizes. Make family game night a friendly competition with small prizes. A small toy, candy, staying up an extra 30 minutes, or a family trophy that can be passed around all make great incentives to motivated your child to want to keep playing.

Classic Games

• Guess Who is a fun guessing game. This one comes with two options. Regular people or superheroes.
• Mouse Trap helps practice building skills and demonstrates cause and effect. The anticipation of the trap keeps the excitement going.
• Perfection is great because it can be played with one person or the whole family. It’s great for fine motor skills and shape recognition.
• Operation is another one that’s great for fine motor. It’s fun to play the game as a family or to practice using the tweezers together and see who can remove the most parts without getting “buzzed.”
• Jenga works well with slightly older kids because it requires a certain level of balance and skill. When we play with younger kids, we start with a smaller tower to make things a little easier.
• Clue Jr. resembles the older version, but focuses on finding who broke the toy. Kids love peeking at the clues and marking things off on the little papers. This is a fun one to play in pairs so parents or older siblings can help the younger ones.

Family Favorites

• What Do You Meme? Family Edition is a new dinner table favorite. Match the phrases in your hand with the meme. Each family member takes turns picking the funniest one.
• Tapple can be played in minutes, or keep going to extend the game time. Choose a category and come up with words within that category that start with the letters on the wheel.
• Kids Against Maturity is similar to the adult version, but with kid-friendly phrases. This is better for the older end of this age group. You may want to go through the cards before playing to make sure that the phrases fit the age group you are playing with.
• I Spy Dig In helps with color and matching skills. Kids love racing to find all of the figures on their cards.
• We play Spoons at just about every family get together. Of course, you can play with just a regular deck of cards and a few spoons, but this kit makes it easy to keep everything in one place.
• Family Charades is fun for all ages. We like this version because the cards are easy to read and include prompts our kids understand.
• Throw Throw Burrito is a combination of dodge ball and a card game. Make sure you have plenty of room for this one as it can get pretty rowdy, but oh so fun!

Strategy Games

• Ticket to Ride First Journey requires logic and planning skills. Collect train cars and claim routes as you journey across the country. You may have to play this one a few times to get the hang of it. The strategy involved is engaging for family members of all ages.
• Gravity Maze has multiple challenges from beginner to advanced. Solve puzzles by creating towers that move the marble from the start to the finish.
• Suspend family game helps with hand eye coordination. Take turns balancing the rods and hope that you aren’t the one to make it fall.

Family Game Night with Older Kids

Planning a family game night gets more difficult as kids get older. They start to have busy schedules and may want to prioritize time with friends. This only makes the time together more valuable! Here are some tips to consider as you plan your game night with your older kids.

• Make family game night a monthly event. Check schedules in advance and plan a game night when you know everyone is free. Share the day with your child so they don’t forget. Choose a night of the week where you know they are usually home and won’t be tempted to go off with their friends.
• Invite some friends to play. Consider letting your child bring a friend to the game night. You will still get the family bonding time and they will be able to hang with their friend. It’s a win for everyone.
• Prizes. Just like with the younger ones, older kids love incentives, too. Think about choosing prizes that might be appealing to them like a gift card to their favorite store or restaurant or gas money if they win.
• Choose games they will play as adults. The teens in our family love to learn games that they know adults play often, like poker or euchre. It makes them feel less like a little kid and more like they are learning something they will use as adults.

Favorite Games for Teens and Tweens

• Left Center Right (LCR) is a dice game that can be played with chips or cash. We like to play with $1 bills. Simply roll the dice and pass the bills based on the letters you roll. The last one standing wins the pot.
• Scattergories is a classic and still one that our family loves. They now have an option to have the timer and letter die on your smartphone.
• Minute of Fun has tons of different 1-minute challenges. This can be played as a team or as individuals. We especially love it for teens that are hard to please because there are so many choices that we are able to find something everyone likes.
• Taboo still has the same structure as it did when I was younger, but the cards have been updated with more modern topics. We play this with teens and at our game nights with friends.
• Telestrations is a cross between Telephone and Pictionary. No need to be an artist for this one, stick figures are fine!

As you start to plan your family game nights, the most important thing to remember is to have fun! Think about the times that work best for your family, choose games that are age-appropriate, and enjoy the bonding time. The memories made with your family will stick with everyone for years to come.

Do you have a game or activity that your family loves? Share them in the comments!