As the kids are going back to school and your house becomes silent, it's time to think about what to do when they come back home this afternoon. My suggestion, being a game store blog is, of course, games! Why, what did you think I was going to say? Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches? Though those would be good too, to eat while you play a game.

There are quite a few games that are perfect for post school day activity. Ones that are quick, easy, and reinforce what they might be learning that day. I'll break them down into categoris for you.

Math

There are several math games out there: Equate (A Scrabble with math game), Educational Insights Math Shark, and traditional games like Rack-o. But my favorite and, I think , the most fun math game is Numbers League, a game about superheros and math. A series of villians are laid out of various values and a player has to capture the villians using heroes that add up to the value of the villain. An expansion adds in multiplying by negative numbers and simple decimals.

Geography

There are a lot of games that deal with Geography. Atlas Adventures, Scrambled States of America, and even Risk; but my favorite line of geography games are the 10 Days series. Kind of like Rack-O with stats of countries, each game starts with 10 random cards from the region of the game on a rack in front of you. By switching out cards in the draw pile or the 3 discard piles, the winner is the first person to get 10 cards that actually go in a sequence of states and countries that are bordering.

Science

Not a lot in this catagory right now, but the Totally Gross Game of Science and Geosafari's Talking Microscope fill that niche rather well.

History

Oh, boy. Hit the motherload there. We have everything from trivia games like Romans and Egyptians to more strategic games like A Brief History of the World and Through the Ages. GAMES magazine's Family Game of the Year last year was Roll Through the Ages, which is basically Yahtzee meets Civilization. Roll the dice, get resources and people, build cities and develop technologies. One of my favorites.

Reading and Spelling

Lots in this area as well. Scrabble, Bananagrams, A to Z junior and Word on the Street Junior are all great choices, but for te older kids, You've Been Sentenced is my choice. It is to sentences what Scrabble is to words. Each player gets 10 cards with 5 words each to choose from. Then the player tries to make the best sentence they can from those cards. The fun comes in the fact the not only does the sentence have to be grammatically correct, it also has to make sense. There's nothing more hilarious than watching someone trying to desperately justify their sentance about dancing pigs and a guy named Howard. :)

Of course, there are plenty of games that are quick and easy and not neccessarily educational, but that's a blog for another time.

For now, this is Drew, signing off.

By age six, most kids have made it through at least the beginnings of Kindergarten, and they are being introduced to the concept of structured learning. At this age, much of what you've been teaching your child through play will be enforced and combined with those things learned in the classroom. The major addition here is the concept of deductive reasoning.

Continuing with abstract strategy, one of my favorite games for my daughter and nephew is Qwirkle. This is a game using wooden tiles, which have colored shapes on them. The idea is to arrange the tiles in a crossword style, so each row or column contains either all the same shape, without repeating color, or all the same color, without repeating shape. Points are scored based on how many rows and columns you affect. I recommend ignoring the points, only introducing them when the game's core concepts are fully understood.

A new category, which really just adds a counting/addition aspect to Candy Land-style games, is roll and move. The most popular of these games are Aggravation and Sorry. Basically, the goal of the game is to move a number of pawns, marbles, etc. around a board, getting them to their home or goal. The math component is great, and kids get a real kick out of rolling high numbers on the dice.

To strengthen vocabulary and spelling, one of my favorite games is Electronic A to Z Junior. In an age when electronics are everywhere, kids love to have electronic devices. This game basically tests your vocabulary. Players are given a topic and are meant to come up with words in the topic. Buttons are pressed matching the letters each word starts with, the goal being to knock out as much of the alphabet as possible. Adults will enjoy this game, too, as most of us can use help with our vocabulary!

Critical thinking is a pretty important Kindergarten focus, and Pictureka! is a great game to strengthen it. The game consists of nine tiles, laid out in a square pattern. There are images all over the board. Players are given cards, which have different things players are supposed to find on the board. It's like a Where's Waldo type of thing. The race to finding the cartoony images will bring out the competitive spirit in your whole family.

I promised deductive reasoning, and I can deliver with the classic Guess Who?. In this game, you are trying to determine which character your opponent has chosen to be found. You take turns asking questions about the characters, eliminating them as you go, until you deduce which character you're trying to find. This game is fun to play, and kids learn of different ways to eliminate a lot of characters at once.

This brings me to the end of my current knowledge of gaming with young children, as my daughter is six. Perhaps I'll return next year with a report on seven-year-olds! Look for a brand new gaming topic soon.

At age five, we begin to see games that can provide a lifetime of fun and enjoyment. These types of games are in the realm of abstract strategy. There are still quite a few games that will only interest the younger age groups, though. This age is also when science begins to take a bigger part in child development.

Blokus is an abstract strategy game where players are trying to place colored tiles on a board in such a way as to block their opponents from doing the same. A five year old can at least pick up the basics of the strategy and how to properly place the tiles. This game promotes spatial thinking, and adults will enjoy it equally. In fact, I would rank it high on a list of "brain training" games for adults (a subject I'll be sure to touch on in the future).

Chickyboom is a game where you have colorful pieces on a seesaw, and players take turns removing pieces from it, scoring points, and trying not to tip it over. This game gets children thinking about cause and effect, weight, and the basics of gravity. And the scoring is basic math. It's also a great game to teach decision making based on the better play. Some pieces are worth more points than others, but their heavier and have a bigger impact on the play area. Of course, there's some hand eye coordination and general manual dexterity at play, too.

If you think science is a theme at age five, this game should cement the thought. Pirates' Blast is a two player game where players are pirates sailing their ships between islands, stealing treasures. The main feature of the game is each player has a mini bellows, which is used to force air at the ships' sails and move the ships. Children will learn about air current and how it effects the sails and the ships. While this is firmly a children's game, it's ok to have a "blast" if you're stuck playing this with your child!

Of course, you can continue to play the games you were playing at ages three and four with your five-year-old. These will continue to mold their concepts of math, reading, and memory. The child will also benefit from having played those games for a couple years, and they'll be good at them. Everyone likes to be good at things. Next we'll discuss the six-year-old.

As you might guess, games for these early ages are not necessarily a hoot for the adults playing. The fun in playing games with young children is watching them "get it." Rest assured, age four is when games start to move toward fun for everyone playing, even the adults. Rather than lumping games into categories, I'll suggest a few, then let you know what areas these games work on.

Hisss is a tile laying game that works like dominoes. Players play card tiles that make a snake of different colors. Players match colors to make the snake, so color recognition plays a big role here. I recommend talking about the colors and the pictures in the background while playing this game. This game also helps to form strategic thinking, as children will start playing their cards in an order they think will work on the snake.

Go Ape! is a variant on the classic Go Fish game, but it manages to be fun for everyone involved. Instead of asking for a card by name, the cards have pictures of monkeys in silly poses, and to get a card from someone, you have to mimic the pose. This game encourages creativity, as the player has to not only mimic the pose, but do it in a way which is recognizeable to everyone else playing. There are a lot of laughs here, and I may have seen adults playing this with no children present.

The Kids of Carcassonne is a variant of the award-winning, European stradegy game, Carcassonne. This is real strategy folks. Players take turns laying tiles, essentially building a map. They have a number of meeples (gamer parlance for "miniature people"), which must be placed on the board. Whoever places their last piece wins. Pieces are placed when roads are completed, and whichever players have people in their color on the road get to place a meeple for each one. The trick is to watch the roads and not let anyone get ahead of you. This game covers colors and counting, as well. I always ask my daughter to count people on the board and how many she has left. After awhile, she started counting how many other people had left so she could zone in on who she can afford to help when placing tiles.

It should be noted many of the games you started with at age three will still apply here. Of course, you'll notice your child needing less and less help. Next week we'll look at age five. There are many five and up game that are actually designed for adult play as well.

As a gamer, I've been itching to game with my daughter since she was born. She's six now, and we've been gaming together since she was three. I can suggest a few games to get you started. I'm not a teacher, but as a parent, I've been living through the experience of what works and what doesn't. In this article we'll focus on the three-year-old. It's important to note you don't need to stop playing a game until either your child becomes bored or you feel their getting nothing out of it. Another important thing to note is three-year-olds often have very short attention spans. Playing a game more than 10 to 15 minutes is not likely. And you may have to work up to that.

Reading

My wife and I have always read to my daughter. She started looking at pictures and recognizing letters at an early age, and we enforced that behavior with a few games. First up were the games based on Eric Carle's work. University Games puts out The Very Hungry Caterpillar Game and Brown Bear - Panda Bear, What Do You See? Game, based on two of his most popular books. Combine these games with the books, and you'll see recognition, and a desire to read begin to grow. And at age three, it's not too late to learn to spell. Enter Boggle Jr. This game has a brilliant method of teaching spelling. You have pictures with a word below them, like "Bear." The child manipulates dice to match the letters on the card. Over time, you begin to use a plastic plate to block the word, giving the child the chance to recognize the picture, name it, and spell it. This was the first game where I saw real progress with my daughter. She started to understand that all those letters do something. Very exciting for a parent!

Hand-Eye Coordination

There are many games focused on hand-eye coordination. One of my favorites come from Blue Orange: Zimbbos! In Zimbbos!, you roll a die and stack cube-like pieces, which represent everything from clowns to elephants. It encourages strategy as well as balance. And it's fun. Also, stuff falling down is still a crowd hit among three-year-olds. Another great game in this vein is Haba's Sleepy Princess and the Pea. Based on the classic fairy tale, you stack the bed with pillows, and a pea. My daughter loves this game because she knows the story so well.

Color Recognition

One of the most classic of kids' games is Candyland. In this game, the players race to the finish line by turning over cards with colors on them, which they match to colors and symbols on the board. It also helps with basic counting, at least up to two. And you can also have the child count how many spaces to the next color space they need. Another great color recognition game is one by Ravensburger: Colorama. In Colorama, you match shapes of different colors by color and shape. There are three different ways to play as your child grows into it.

Matching

You'll find matching elements in all of the above games (especially Brown Bear - Panda Bear), but there is one matching-specific game I really loved for my daughter when she was three. Ravensburger's Teddy Mix and Match is made with very heavy chipboard, at least as thick as a toddler book. Basically you can play different matching games with very different looking bears. My daughter and I would name the bears and tell stories about them. This acted as an aid in matching because rather than just recognizing symbols, she "knew" these bears. Very fun!

Counting

I never found much in the way of counting-specific games for age three--at least not that I thought was very helpful. That said, any of the game's pieces from above can be used in counting. Kids need visuals more than actual numbers at this age, so feel free to start talking about how many pieces their holding or how many spaces their moving. This will get you ready for some great counting games at age four!

This is just the tip of the iceberg for your gaming choices. Stop by your local game store for more great ideas!

Well, there is a Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set. It comes with a basic version of the rulebook and the GM's guide. Not enough to make your own characters, but it comes with pre-generated characters for you. It gives you the basics on combat, movement, etc. It's more of a boardgame version of the real role-playing game, just enough to let you see if it's something you'd be interested in before you spend a bunch of money on the main game.

The Dungeon and Dragons RPG itself has several books. The main one every player should have is the Player's Handbook, which gives you everything you need to build a character from the ground up and run that character through all the basics.

The DM, or Dungeonmaster needs the DM's Handbook and usually the Monster Manual (if he wants to make his own adventures). Most pre-built adventures have the monster stats for the monsters used in that adventure in the back.

There are also two For Dummies books available to help you get started - Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies and a Dungeon Master for Dummies.

While board games can be an excellent source of learning for traditional subjects like math, reading, and geography, there are important life skills which can be gleaned as well. This article specifically discusses one of the most important: interpersonal communications--talking to people to communicate ideas or get what you want. There are many games which can help in this area, from several different categories. I'll discuss party, trivia, and strategy here.

When talking to our friends, family, and co-workers, it's common to be misunderstood. Worse, we often don't know it's happening. Assumptions are made and before you know it, someone is on the wrong track. Clarity of message is something most work on daily, whether they know it or not, and there's really no end in sight for necessary practice. One game I love, which really gets this message across (pun intended) is Backseat Drawing by Out of the Box Games. In this game, a director has to explain how to draw something without saying what it is; then the group must guess what the item is. It's amazing how the phrase "draw a rectangle" can be misconstrued. You find yourself eventually saying, "draw a vertical rectangle, about six inches long, where the short side is about half the length of the long side." At first, long phrases like the latter may seem to take too much time, but you quickly learn a little more time spent on expectations makes for a better finished product. Life lesson, anyone?

In Bohnanza by Rio Grande Games, you play a bean farmer who has to play the hand he's dealt. You're given a hand of cards, which are beans, and two fields in which to plant them. There are two problems introduced in the game. Each field can only have one type of bean, and you must play your hand in order from front to back. Further, in order to plant a new type of bean, you must sell off the current beans in the field in question, and you only get paid if you have enough of the bean to sell. So to avoid working for free, you must negotiate with your opponents to trade beans, sometimes giving them away, in order to maximize your profit. There are two main lessons here: 1) negotiation is all about give and take, and 2) to succeed, you sometimes need to help those who oppose you.

Over the years, several games have seen release, which include bluffing about your knowledge. My favorite to come along is Origin of Expressions by Discovery Bay. In this game, you are tasked with coming up with where a given expression came from, like "chip off the old block" or "hit the hay." And the kicker is if you don't know, you're not off the hook! You should make up an answer and convince your opponents you're right. A value-minded parent might consider this a lesson in lying. In truth (get it?), you're really learning to speak with confidence and clarity--a lesson many of us are learning to this day.

The great thing about all the games I've mentioned is they're fun, and they don't wear their educational value on their proverbial sleeve. One challenge in getting someone to play educational games is people don't like to know they're learning. It's my belief the best learning games are wrapped in a good time, and not labeled like a textbook.

In 1974, the roleplaying hobby was born with the release of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). This quirky and new kind of game--played with books, paper & pencil, funny dice, little metal figurines, and huge maps--exploded in the '70s and continued to grow. While D&D is meant to emulate fantasy fiction, today there are RPGs available for any genre you can think of: science fiction, horror, super heroes, fairy tales, Old West, feudal Japan, giant robots, World War II, crime, espionage, etc. And some genres are mash-ups of the above, like horror in the Old West.

Roleplaying games are often misunderstood. The '80s brought controversy over devil worship (an accusation disproven, of course). People who play RPGs are assumed to be outcasts--geeks and nerds. These sorts of stereotypes and assumptions are born of misunderstanding. Now that "geek is chic," many celebrities have outed themselves as roleplayers or D&D players. To name a few: Actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, NBA All-Star Tim Duncan, Royal Shakespeare Theatre Alum, Dame Judi Dench, and TV personality, Stephen Colbert. But what is roleplaying?

There are more opinions on how to describe a roleplaying game than I could list here. In this case, I will go with the broadest, high-level description I can. Roleplaying has been likened to "cowboys and Indians" or make believe with rules. It's been described as interactive storytelling. These two basic descriptions are both, in essence true. Let me break it down by describing a typical RPG.

In an RPG, the players at the table take on different roles. One player takes on the role of the Game Master (GM--also called Dungeon Master, referee, narrator, storyteller, etc.). The GM's job is to come up with a framework of a story or a series of encounters. The other players make characters, the protagonists in the GM's story. The GM is tasked with taking on the roles of the other people and creatures in the world, and to describe the world for the other players. Whenever the players want to take an action that involves tension or danger, or is contrary to another character's aims, they use the game rules to gauge their success. This is usually done by rolling dice--the forementioned funny-shaped kind. And that's the basics.

Roleplaying is great for families because there are so many benefits to playing them. Skills like socialization, basic (and sometimes not-so-basic) math, and general creativity are all honed at the game table--not to mention quality family time. Roleplaying games can make for an evening of fun, and the players have the option of telling huge, years-long stories if they choose. And if some of the most successful people in the world have played them, how can that be a bad thing?

What better way to learn than with a fun game.  Having a degree in early childhood development I believe a hands on fun way of learning is one the best ways to teach.  There are so many games out there that parents can play with kids and teachers can have in their classroom that would help to reinforce learning and also help with fun education.  All kinds of games; from Cariboo, to United States Bingo can be of use.

Cariboo is a great game for preschoolers.  It's a great way to start them off learning shapes, colors, numbers, and letters while giving them chance to achieve the goal of finding the magical balls that will unlock the secret treasure.   I have sat down with my nephews and played this game many times and each time we played they both got better at it!

Another example is Pickles to Penguins.  In Pickles to Penguins players are trying to be the first to get rid of all their cards first by finding ways they relate to each other.  They can be related by: use, types of food, same color, or even that they start with the same letter! Pickles to Penguins is a great game to help teach children how things can be associated with each other.

I could keep going on and on with so many other games that teach everything from math, English, manners, to states and capitals.  Also games are great way to help kids with social skills and sharing.  Almost every game can used as teaching tool and teach a child something.  What's your favorite game to use for teaching?

One of the most well-known games in the world is Yahtzee (also known as Kismet in some circles). It's the classic where you roll some dice, keep some, and roll some more, hoping to get a scoring "hand." There are several games which can trace their roots back to Yahtzee, but the ones I'll showcase here are of the Eurogame style. In essence, this is meant as a great way to bridge the gap between old school family games and the European strategy games that are gaining in popularity. The games I'm writing about here are Catan Dice Game, Roll Through the Ages, and To Court the King.

The Catan Dice Game serves as a great "double-whammy." Not only is it a great twist on Yahtzee, but it's a wonderful bridge to the most popular European strategy game, Settlers of Catan. Like Settlers, the Catan Dice Game has you building communities on a newly-discovered island. When you roll the dice, you're looking to collect resources which allow you to build improvements like settlements, roads, and cities. The score pad is a miniature depiction of the island from the Settlers of Catan board game.

Roll Through the Ages is, believe it or not, a civilization building game. You use the dice to increase your population, develop new technologies, build monuments, and build cities--all using the simple dice mechanic recognizable from Yahtzee. This game lead to many different civilization games including the same publisher's Through the Ages and other games like Rise of Empires.

To Court the King is a game where you are trying to gain the favor of people in a kingdom, with the ultimate goal being the king himself. The two major differences between this game and the two mentioned above are the lack of specialized dice and the lack of the need for a score pad. In To Court the King you roll standard dice with pips and the hands you come up with allow you to collect cards, which represent people in the king's court. These cards give you special abilities with the ultimate goal of getting the king card. It's just a great twist on Yahtzee, and for people who don't like the math element in Yahtzee's scoring, this is a great answer. To Court the King sets you up to identify scores of European strategy game which involve mechanical buzzwords like "set collection" and "role selection." It can also be a great gateway to games like Magic: the Gathering.

If you're looking for that bridge to European strategy games, or if you want something more from your games than rolling dice and keeping score, you can't go wrong with Catan Dice Game, Roll Through the Ages, and To Court the King.