Top 20 Classic Family Board Games You Must Play With Your Kids

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When Janice I were growing up, we spent countless hours at our family cabin in the wilderness with no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing and no nearby neighbors with kids.

Some of my strongest childhood memories are waking up to pancakes cooked on a wood burning stove and playing Monopoly all evening with my sister and our parents as we sat by the fire to stay warm.

I loved playing board games. While I didn’t appreciate everything about our off-the-grid vacations, I adored having my parents’ undivided attention and devotion to playing games as a family.

At home, my parents were so busy with work and the typical demands of life, we rarely sat down as a family to play games. But we went to our wilderness cabin several times a year and sometimes we’d stay there for two weeks at a time.

So we played lots of games.

We logged the most hours playing Monopoly of course. I rarely won — Janice seemed to do far better than I did at stocking up on hotels and properties — but I loved that game so much!

I fondly remember playing Clue, Risk, The Game of Life, Connect 4, Operation and more. We also played Scrabble and Yahtzee… especially with my Nana, whom we would stop by and visit on our drive to the cabin. She was an expert at both Scrabble and Yahtzee. One of my favorite games — not a board game, but I must include it — was Uno.

I have a few of those exact same game boards still to this day. It is so fun to share these classic board games with my own girls who are now ages 9 and 11.

Our Top 20 Family Board Games

Which games do you remember playing as a kid? We had all the popular board games and played each of them for hours and hours and hours.

These are our favorite games that we played most when we were kids…

1. Monopoly
2. Clue
3. Uno
4. Battleship
5. Connect 4
6. Sorry
7. Perfection
8. Boggle
9. Hungry Hippos
10. Operation
11. Trouble
12. Mastermind
13. Snakes and Ladders
14. The Game of Life
15. Othello
16. Backgammon
17. Checkers
18. Trivial Pursuit
19. Yahtzee
20. Scrabble

We were born in 1973, and so “games” were never electronic in our childhood. These board games provided quality family fun night after night. I’m truly thankful for all the time we spent as a family around these games.

You may think kids these days are happiest with a smartphone or laptop, but the truth is nothing can beat a good old fashioned game of Monopoly with the ones you love.

If you haven’t played a board game with your kids recently, make tonight “family game night”.

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Written by Susan Carraretto, co-founder of 5 Minutes for Mom
Talk with me: @5minutesformom and Facebook.com/5minutesformom
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