Board Games etc for 3 year old

Motherof1

Hi all,

Unfortuantely : (, my Tesco's are not selling the 'board games for buttons' as some were so lucky to get. Anyway, does anyone know the best games a 3 year old little girl would enjoy? We tend to do the same things a lot and playing games together would be a lot of fun.

Also, I have been looking around and I can't find anything under £10.00....is that just me? and where could I get the best possible price?

Appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks, L.

newMS

buckaroo (or similar) is easy to play, woolies do their own brand sort of games a lot cheaper than MB and the like

mintymoneysaver

orchard toys do a lot of games for younger children.

http://www.orchardtoys.co.uk/

We especially loved the shopping game in our house!

newMS

ps, just looked at woolies website and their own brand (chad valley) games are priced around 3.99 - 4.99

Becles

The Chad Valley games are good value for money, and are often on offer in Woolworths such as "BOGOF" or "buy one get one half price".

We also had the shopping list game mentioned above, and my two loved it. They still play it occasionally!

You can get packs of cards with characters on. We had a Thomas set. You can play all sorts with these - memory games, Happy Families, Snap etc.

Or what about doing jigsaws together. My youngest has always loved jigsaws.

Any games that get them to use their memory or develop skills like counting are good, as they don't realise they are learning as they play.

Rachie_B

we also like the chad valley games

try your local car boot sale ,we have had fab games from there,just check all the bits n pieces are there first!

my youngest loves doing jigsaws too and again carboot sales have proved a good place

rio

Snail's Pace Race is a good one IMO. The players have to guess which snail will win the race rather than try to win themselves. It seems to make it easier for the little ones to take turns playing.

All six snails race every time, no matter how many players are in the game. Each player takes it turn to throw the two colour dice--if you throw blue and red, then the blue and red snails each move on one space on the board. If you throw two yellows, then the yellow snail moves on two spaces on the board. As the game gets underway, each player has to guess which snail will be the first to finish, or which snail will be the last to finish; whatever you prefer!

dora37

Another vote for 'The Shopping Game' :T

Nicki

There's one called "Traffic Jam" for this age group, which basically involves creating traffic jams by laying cards with pictures of cars or obstacles on them. It's quite simple to play, but can get a bit more complicated as they get older and you use more strategy. There's another one, whose exact name I don't know, which involves counting the spots on a dog, which is quite good for teaching early maths. Draughts is also quite simple for this age group.

Other than that, card games are good - snap and pairs would work for this age group, or pen and pencil games such as noughts and crosses, and squares, and hangman all work well. She might also be old enough to play battleships if you make the grid quite small. The other one which my son used to like at this age was picture consequences, where you draw the head, then fold the paper so its not showing and get her to do body and arms, then fold again and you do feet. Unfold to reveal full figure and decide what it is. She might then want to make up a story involving the character.

For games that you can make yourself, bingo is always a good one, or alphabet soup (like bingo but the card has letters rather than numbers). You can also make a quiz based on her favourite books, with questions written out on little cards to make it look more like a game. You can make it a mix of dead easy - what does Paddington Bear wear on his feet - type questions, and more discussion type ones - how did Baby Bear feel when he saw that Goldilocks had broken his chair.

There are also lots of websites aimed at teachers which have puzzles, drawing activities, pre-writing activities etc aimed at this kind of level, so you could just print these off as and when you need them and do them together.

Sorry, I've slightly wandered off the actual board game point, but your post seemd to suggest you wanted ideas for activities to do together so hope these ideas help.

gingin_2

There is a game called "tummy ache" which my daughter loves I think Orchard toys do it (mine is from when I was a little girl). Picture card lotto is another good one.

Dominoes is also good although not a board game as well as snakes and ladders.

purplepurple

Colorama is fab - my two both started playing it at 2/3 yrs old and still love playing it at 6/7 yrs! Good for colour / shape recognition, adding, subtracting etc