Board Game Friday! Top 10 Games to Play with Kids Ages 5 and Under

At the end of last year, I counted down my Top 50 games of 2023.  Today, I'm back with another countdown but this time it's my Top 10 games to play with kids aged 5 and under (and I can make this list since my son is currently 5 so I'm speaking entirely from experience)!

One note before I start my list:  My son and I have been playing games forever, he's definitely more advanced in his game playing as compared to many kids.  That's fine. It's not a competition here, games should be fun (and hopefully a learning experience at that age).  Take all suggestions with a grain of salt, every child is different!

With that caveat out of the way, let's get to our countdown!

Top 10 Games to Play with Kids Ages 5 and Under

#10:  Dinosaur Exhibit

A first introduction to "roll and write" games.  This is a simple game where you roll dice, pick one, and then fill in the corresponding image somewhere on your player sheet.  Ultimately, you are trying to make rectangles of certain sizes in order to place dinosaur fossil tiles to score points.  There's a bit of strategy here but as a parent you can easily see what your child is doing and play accordingly to keep things fun!

#9:  Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is one of the most recent games that I showed my son and he has been loving it.  It's basically a push your luck style dice roller with just enough probability to make your decisions have some weight.  There are three different colors with the green being best for the player and red being the worst.  You have a general idea of how likely you are to draw each of the colored dice and then from there it's push your luck to the win!

#8:  Dragonrealm

An introduction to the concept of melds and straights, this simple card game sees players trying to capture different locations in an effort to have the most points at the end of the game.  There's enough luck in the dice rolling to help keep everyone in the game though I do think "better" players will win out more often than not.  Still, a fun little game and a great introduction to gaming concepts that appear in many adult board games!

#7:  The Quest Kids

An introduction to dungeon crawling with heavy reliance on helping other players (there's a whole deck of cards called "Kind Kid" cards which you can only get by helping other people).  It's super simple but my son loved this game for quite some time!  

#6:  Catapult Feud

This is probably my son's current favorite game.  It's basically a bunch of building blocks that you use to build your own castle and then use the catapults to try and knock down the other person's construction.  More toy than game (we don't follow the "game rules" at all on this one), it still belongs on the list if for no other reason than how much my son loves it!

#5:  Karuba

Karuba is a tile laying game where you try to connect your explorers to their identically colored temples.  The explorers have to travel along roads which you create by laying your tiles.  The catch to this game is that there is no luck, or at least, the luck is the same for everyone as each turn all players place the same exact tile on their individual player boards.  

#4:  Kingdomino

A game that my son can play but also a game that I play with other adults (presumably?) over on Board Game Arena online.  A quick, simple, yet fun tile drafting, tile laying game which singlehandedly taught my son basic multiplication!  This one is still a favorite of ours.

#3:  Ticket to Ride

I'm using this as a placeholder for virtually any game in the Ticket to Ride family.  For young kids, I would 100% start them off with Ticket to Ride: First Journey.  My son and I played that for a few months before he tried some of the smaller "real" Ticket to Ride games, specifically New York and London.  Once he got comfortable on the smaller maps, we moved on to the original Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride: Europe, Ticket to Ride Italy/Japan, etc.  You can't go wrong, the game is a modern classic for a reason.

#2:  Forbidden Island

Sometimes games need a sense of dread and despair which Forbidden Island brings in spades since it's a game about an island sinking away to nothing.  If you can't gather the four treasures and helicopter away, it's game over for everyone.  This is a great cooperative game with an easy-to-understand ruleset and a great sliding scale of difficulty.  My son and I have worked our way up to playing on the hardest two modes these days and he still enjoys the game quite a bit.

#1:  My First Orchard

I'd be remiss if I didn't include the game that probably properly "hooked" my son into board games.  My First Orchard is a cooperative game for kids around the age of 2 or so.  The basic idea is you all need to gather four wonderfully chunky fruit pieces for each of the four types of fruit before the bad crow makes it to the end of his walk.  It's a game that's 95% luck and 5% playing the odds but it's fun for its target age group (and so much better for adults than many little kid games).

That's my list.  It's almost bittersweet making the list because some of the games on the list I'll probably never play again as my son has already outgrown them.  Some (such as My First Orchard) I've already traded away while others (The Quest Kids, Ticket to Ride: New York) are on my current "For Trade" list over on Boardgamegeek.