Anyone who has a five year old (or is a Kindergarten teacher) knows exactly what I’m talking about here.

Five year olds are in a weird place emotionally, physically and intellectually. They’re learning new things at a phenomal rate (reading, math, music), they’re able to do new things every day (brush teeth, make sandwiches, hop on one foot) and gaining social skills at a dizzying rate (so far two girls in my son’s class have declared that they want to marry him).

I think that this is why kids can seem to have a split personality at this age. They’re facing an internal conflict about wanting to be a big kid, but they don’t want to leave babyhood behind completely, because, let’s face it, growing up is scary.

Basically, aside from puberty, being five is one of the roughest years of a kid’s life.

So playing a board game with a five year old can be - interesting.

Some days, they’ll be able to handle an hour-long game of something complicated, like Carcasonne. On other days, it can be a struggle to get them to focus on Go Fish for five miuntes.

Example: Our family got Sequence for Christmas. It’s rated for 7 and up, but our five year old can do grade 2 math and has been reading for nearly two years, so I didn’t figure it would be out of reach for him.

At the start of the game, he was engrossed, thinking up strategy, etc. Ten minutes later, he was picking cards at random, and didn’t even noticed when the game was over.

As long as you’re willing to accept that this game-playing behaviour is going to be the norm for a year or so, playing games with a five year old is still possible.

I should know - I’ve got two of them at my house this afternoon for a board game playdate.

At our house, we have two five-shelf bookcases in which we store our collection. It was a complete disaster, with pieces missing or stuffed in odd places.

We took it shelf by shelf, going through each game and finding out what was missing, the kids helping out along the way.

We wrote down what was missing from each game on sticky notes, and the kids put together the puzzles to make sure all the pieces were there.

Then we went through what we call the “missing pieces” bag, which is a large ziploc bag with pieces, cards, dice, etc., that we’ve found around the house, and tried to put things back in the right boxes.

It took us two three-hour sessions, but we managed to get the kids’ games and puzzles done.

The benefit is that now they have easy access to all of them, and it’s so much more appealing to actually play a game when you know that all of the pieces are there.

We still have a big mess on the other side of the room in the grown-up games shelves, but I feel confident we’ll soon see improvement there, too.

I encourage anyone reading this to go through their own collection of games - there’s nothing like tidying up to make you remember how fun it is to actually play those games you haven’t touched in a while.

I started with my five-year-old, a sometimes silly, sometimes serious little guy who prefers music and art to dirt and trucks.

Here are his three favourite games:

Guess Who

This is honestly one of my favourite games, too. The only disadvantge it has is that you can only play with two people - no more and no less.

He says his favourite part of the game is “asking questions and finding out what it is”, by which I think he means he likes the logic aspect. He likes being able to systematically eliminate possibilities and come up with an answer.

I like that about the game, too. I also like that you can play it with a five year old, but you an play it with older kids, too, by picking up two (or more) cards each game.

I personally love playing with three cards each.

Guess Who is an inexpensive game (around here you can find it for about $15), and there are some variants that look interesting - Littlest Pet Shop is the first one that comes to mind.

Also, the more recent versions have added in faces with different colours, which I think is awesome.

13 Dead End Drive

We picked this game up at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store for $1.99. Even with a few minor missing pieces, we found it a good value.

Our five-year loves this one for “the cards and the traps”. The traps are probably the best part of this game, which usually involves me getting frustrated with the set-up process.

A new version of the game may be less frustrating, but 13 Dead End Drive does require about 5-10 minutes of assembly each time you play it. Which is why we don’t play it as often as our kids would like.

Monopoly Jr.

This game is meant as a way into the Monopoly games for younger kids. However, I find it still takes about an hour to play, so if your kids don’t have the patience for it, you might want to set a timer and declare a winner when it goes off.

“Moving around in a circle” is our son’s favourite of this game. I think he likes the repetition, but also the fact that it’s a lot like adult games, so it feels more grown up playing it.

Monopoly of any kind is a great way to learn about taking turns and counting money, so it makes sense to start trying to play it at age 5.

Next up: our seven-year-old’s recommendations (expect a reference to Pokemon!)

Essentially, we agreed that any game that gets kids active and working together is good, but we’re all more interested in playing games that are excellent.

Games that are silly, noisy and active, yet add something to their lives or teaches them something - even if it is that playing a game does not have to be chaos.

Scouter Allan told us about a game he used to play with the Beavers, when he was a Beaver leader, called “Steal the Key”. All you need is a blindfold and a pile of old keys.

You select one Beaver to sit in the middle of the circle, blindfold him and place the pile of keys in front of him. The other Beavers take turns trying to “steal” the keys without being heard.

If the blindfolded Beaver hears him before he can return to his spot, he yells “thief”, and the key must be returned.

This game teaches some important lessons, including physical awareness, while having fun together as a group. You don’t need to tell them how to move quietly - you can (and should) let them experiment with ways to do that themselves.

Think about what that one simple act can do. By allowing kids to try things out for themselves, by allowing them to fail and to succeed, by showing them that you trust them to work it out for themselves, you can give one of the best gifts in the world - confidence.

The shy, quiet child who usually goes un-noticed and is picked last for races suddenly finds he’s really good at this game.

He sees the noisier children, the ones who can’t sit still, struggle with the game, then turn to him for help.

And those more active kids learn that asking for help doesn’t make the game less fun. They all learn that they can figure something out themselves - without interference from an adult.

There are dozens of excelletn games like these for kids and teens. The key is encouraging the group to work together, learn from each other, and recognize that everyone has something to add to the group.

These are skills that will help them succeed in all facets of their lives.

Dodge ball and tag are good games. They can be a lot of fun, and a great addition to an afternoon in a big open space with a bunch of kids. But games like “Steal the Key” give them so much more for the same amount of effort.

We have 15 boys, ages five to seven, in our colony, and you just can’t play board games with that many kids, no matter how hard you try.

The kind of games we like best as Beaver leaders are the kind that get them moving, but don’t encourage chaos. Especially if it helps to reinforce whatever we’re learning about that week.

If you ask any active young person which games are their favourites, you’ll likely hear “tag” and “hide and seek” in the list, and for good reason. They both allow for plenty of running around, something that kids often get told not to do.

But a truly good group game is more than just running around. I can still remember a game we played in science class in elementary school that was a form of tag. It accompanied a lesson on the three stages of matter – solid liquid and gas.

When the teacher yelled “Solid”, we all had to link arms with whoever was near and stand still. When she yelled “Liquid” we all walked around normally. And when she yelled “Gas”, we all ran around like maniacs.

So you have the element of running around, which made the 16 boys in my class of 24 quite happy, and it also firmly ingrained the idea of these three states in my mind.

Recently, we played a game with our Beavers that comes from
Taiwan called “Hopping Sticks” – it probably has a Taiwanese name, but I don’t know it. It was a simple relay race – another popular game with groups – in which the Beavers hopped over sticks, then turned around, picked one up and hopped back.

You could make it harder by getting kids to hop on one foot, or hop backwards – or for a group of gymnasts – cartwheel or back flip over the sticks.

Relays are easy to make up on the spot, as are station-based games. Our Beavers actually really like stations. It’s easy for us to divide them up by Lodge group or Tail group and have them go around to do three different things.

The whole thing has got me thinking – why don’t kids play group games as much anymore?

I can remember playing hide and seek for hours, especially in the summer time, when there was less to do, and you could spend hours playing games outside with your friends. It was especially fun to play in the dark – flashlight hide and seek, we called it.

There was also the popular “backwards hide and seek” or “sardines”, in which one person would hide while everyone else counted, and then we would all try to find that one person.

Once you found the hider, you had to hide along with them, until there was only one person left looking. Depending on how many kids were playing and where the hiding spot was, it could get pretty squishy – and giggly.

So, I’m calling on youth group leaders and teachers to help me compile a list of really good outdoor games to play with kids, so that we can all start reviving the culture of playing outside together.

You can find it on eBay or kijiji, or you can try contacting the museum through their website at http://museum.gov.ns.ca/fgm/en/home/default.aspx

The game is a little different than most, and it is definitely educational. It has four different kinds of cards - Jurrasic, Triassic and Cretaceous cards, each with a different dinosaur on it (with information about where it is found, how big it was and whether it was a herbivore or a carnivore), as well as Fossil cards for each period, as well as ones labelled Mesozoic.

Ther are two rounds - in the first round you collect dinosaur cards from each of the three eras, and in the second you get your opponents to lose cards by making the dinosaurs go “extinct”.

One of the great things about the game is that you can use as many cards as you like to make the game whatever length you want. For instance, we played with 10 dinosaurs from each era, and it took us about 90 minutes. It probably would have only taken us an hour, but my 5 year old is REALLY slow at rolling the dice and moving his piece around the board.

While we played, I suggested to my 7-year-old that this would be a good game to invite a friend from school over to play.

It really is meant for the 7-10 set, especially ones who love dinosaurs. Though, if you have patience, kids as young as 4 or 5 can play - reading is not required, because everything is colour-coded.

There’s a plethora of educational games like this one out there. Don’t be afraid to pick one up just because it’s not a brand name. Look for games on topics that your kids are interested in, and you’ll probably have lots of success.

Describing the game to people, it sounds lame. So I’m not even going to bother. If you want to read about how the games works, visit the Wikipedia entry. Or the “official” website at: http://www.otb-games.com/apples/apples_partybox.html

According to the box, this is a game for 12 and up, but I say that as long as a kid can read, go for it. Of course, just like any time you’re playing a grown-up game with younger kids, you may have to modify the rules a little.

For example, many of the pop culture references may be missed, so give the kids the option to trade in cards if they don’t know anything about the person, place or thing printed on it.

I think the appealing part of the game for me is the fact that there is never a right or wrong answer. The person who is the judge can use whatever criteria they want to select the winning card.

And you are allowed – even encouraged – to try to persuade the judge to pick a certain card. It doesn’t even have to be yours.

One of the little quirks of the game that our family has picked up is the idea that the green apple cards you collect (with the descriptive words on them like smelly, heart-warming or sordid) are accurate descriptors for that person. So, at the end of the game and go through them.

“Oh, I’m smelly, heart-warming and sordid. Sounds about right.”

And then much giggling ensues. At least from me. I’m going to blame my love affair with words for that one.

This is a great game to play with your teens, who will get a kick over having a turn to be the judge of you for a turn, and you end up finding out a lot about them in the meantime. This game does more than just entertain – it gives insight into a person’s sense of humor and how they look at the world.

And for parents of teens, that is a refreshing (and often surprising!) turn of events.

We spent Christmases at our grandmother’s house, where there was a small but interesting collection of old board games. Monopoly and Chinese Checkers shared shelf space with Triominos and Head of the Class.

But by the time we got to university, we’d long ago memorized all of the answers to all of the trivia games, and while Monopoly is a good way to waste three to five hours (especially the way my brother plays), you can only play it so many times before you start dreaming about rolling double fives.

I’ve come down with a nasty cold that’s left my head feeling like someone’s been shoving cotton in it while I sleep, and my voice sounding like I smoke 15 packs a day. All of the loving attention my husband’s been giving me has made me think about comfort games.

Comfort games are the ones you play when you’re feeling cosy and safe, like when the power goes out or a snowstorm’s a-brewin’. Or maybe it’s the ones you play in the tent with your kids when it rains the whole vacation. Funny how all of this seems to be related to poor weather for me!

So, I’ve got reviews of three of my favourite comfort games (all of them found on my personal shelf).

Scrabble

This is a classic, and it is so for a reason. I’ve always been a word-lover, and the words you can learn trying to get that Q or Z on a triple word score are quite interesting. For kids under 8, it might be best to start with Scrabble Jr., which has two levels of play to get them used to the idea.

But if you’re feeling patient, and you’re willing to relax the rules a little, you can play this game with any child who can spell. Allow proper nouns and contractions, or include French spellings if your child (like mine) is in French Immersion at school. Or, abandon keeping score, and just see how many words you can make together.

Cribbage

I grew up with all of my dad’s family playing this any time they got together, for hours on end sometimes. My dad even went home to play an all-night Cribbage marathon with his brothers last summer.

For the un-intiated, Cribbage can seem complicated - my husband always wondered why there were two pegs used to keep score - but once you get the hang of it, it’s a speedy game. I reccommend learning by either playing online in a social room, or reading Hoyle’s guide to card games.

Once you’ve mastered the regular game, try this twist that my brother and I loved: Backwards Cribbage. A rule that can be applied to almost any game, Backwards Cribage is just like regular cribbage, only you’re trying NOT to get points, and the first one to the finish is the loser.

Kids as young as 5 or 6 can learn to play this with a parent, but I do reccommend starting by playing to 61 instead of the usual 121.

Tour de Force

This is a classic Canadian trivia game, introduced to me by my husband and his parents. It was created by Pierre Burton  and Charles Templeton. Waddingtons, the company that produced this game (and many others that I love) was bought out by Hasbro (or at least that’s what Wikipedia claims), so you’ll have to scour second hand shops and eBay for this one.

But it’s a beautiful game, played in teams of two or more (we often play old vs. young or men vs. women), and has lots of Canadian content. My favourite part is getting the special 10-point bonus cards… even though we usually end up going back five places.

This is a tough one to play with younger kids, but is a good way to get teens talking about the chanes to some of the answers (it IS 20 years old, after all), and the way they’d change the categories if they could.

When I was about 12 or 13, my uncle gave me one of the best games for a kid this age. It was called “Dweebs, Geeks and Weirdos”, which, as far as I can tell, is no longer produced. (check out http://www.amazon.com/Dweebs-Geeks-Weirdos-Totally-Awesome/dp/B000YPRY0K for used versions)

The gist of the game, is that you do a bunch of silly stunts to collect points and win the game. There are plenty of others in this vein - Truth or Dare is the one everyone knows - and they all go over big with 10-14 year olds, generally.

But the tendancy to favour social games isn’t just limited to doing silly things in a big group. It also lends itself to games like Pictionary, Cranium, and a Canadian TV classic - TalkAbout.

Use this trend to your advantage when trying to keep (or create) games night with your teens or pre-teens. Get them to invite their best friends over and challenge kids vs. adults (recruit a friend or two of your own, too).

This is also the age in which strategy games are most successful, since the ability to use logic is even stronger as kids enter junior high and high school.

You can start with Checkers and Chess, but if your kid is the kind to shrink from something so stodgy sounding, try Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan or Risk.

The beauty of those last three is that it adds a bit of character to the strategy. They all strengthen mapping and geography skills, too, but you don’t have to tell your kids that!

And for the kids who want a little of both, you can turn to games like the Munchkin series (by Steve Jackson) or Zombies.

From here, it’s not far to reach the world of role playing games. While I don’t play them myself, I don’t have a lot of problems with them either.

Dungeons & Dragons got a lot of bad press when I was a teen, but as long as you don’t find your kid playing nothing but, there shouldn’t be any cause to worry.

As always, the best way to make sure gaming is safe and fun at this age is to make sure you’re involved with your kids. If they’re interested in role playing games, get them to teach you how to play it, too.

There’s an increasing range of games available for the elementary school set, too. Most of the classics have a junior version that works really well for this age - Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, etc., but they’re not limited to these.

As you get into older elementary school kids, you’ll find that they’re looking to play the “grown-up” versions more often. This age range thrives on feeling that they’re older.

That’s why this is also a great age to introduce your own personal favourites. I suggest starting with the favourites because you’re going to end up playing these games over and over and over.

For the younger end of this age range, try games like Guess Who? that require some reading skills, but also introduce logical thinking. We’ve also had success with The Castle, a tile-laying game from the makers of Carcasonne and Settlers of Catan.

As kids approach 8 years old, introduce trivia games. One games I’m actually really excited to try out this year is the latest version of Trivial Pursuit that has three levels of questions.

Another good way into trivia games for this set is a verson of Scene It? that features a show or movie that they watch a lot. For instance, we have the Disney version. This gives the advantage to the kids, who have watched far more Disney movies than we have (or at least watched them more times!).

Also good with this age group are games like Life, Ratrace, or Cranium’s Zooreeka. Each has elements of collecting and/or trading, which kids this age really get a kick out of.

All of the games you play with kids this age are warm-ups for the full-out adult games they’ll play when they’re older, so any game that gets the whole family involved is great.

We’ve had lots of fun with Cranium’s Family Fun or Whoonu, and also discovered some classic “cabin” games, like Tock, Uno and Parcheesi.

The bonus for classic games like the last three is that there’s opportunity to play with grandparents and other older adults, since they are more familiar with them.

Once the kids hit middle school, social and strategy games become a more popular option. It’s also the time when they really start playing games with other kids. We’ll tackle those issues tomorrow.