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The school holidays are in full swing here in the UK, which means there has never been a better time for us to review boredom-busting games to play with kids. We’ve chosen some card games that we play most with our kids that are great for under 10s; they don’t take too long to play and are simple enough to grasp. Whether you’re on the move and looking for games to play in the car, at the airport, or just looking for some family fun, we recommend checking these out:
Exploding Kittens
This fun, quick paced card game is a great choice for families and will definitely get your competitive sides showing! Suitable for up to 5 players, the concept is simple: don’t be the one to draw an Exploding Kitten from the deck! Cards have functions, such as skipping a turn, looking at the top three cards and forcing players to relinquish cards from their hand with the aim of getting hold of the limited number of ‘Defuse’ cards in the deck, or having cards in your hand that can see an opponent reveal an Exploding Kitten and (if they do not hold a Defuse card) be knocked out of the game. This continues until, with two players left in the game, the final player draws the inevitable Exploding Kitten. We’d say that game is probably best for children aged around 7 or 8 – there’s a degree of reading involved and certainly a bit of strategy at play, but equally, kids have fun just playing their cards (and looking at the funky card designs!) and seeing what will happen!
Unstable Unicorns
We first played Unstable Unicorns with our kids at a board game café in Brighton, and have been hooked ever since! The premise of the game is relatively simple; you need to win the game by having 5 unicorn cards on the table (in the stables!). You do this by following the instructions on the cards, such as stealing another player’s unicorn or cards from their hand, making your unicorn stronger or sending cards to other player’s hands. It sounds like chaos – and it is! It’s also mildly frustrating, frantic and at whole lot of fun. It certainly teaches children not to take the outcome of games for granted – or to trust other players! - as you can quickly go from being ‘about to win’ to last place with one or no unicorns in the stable. Games last around ten minutes, which is great for kids’ shorter attention span, and is most suited for kids that have some basic reading ability. What we did find with Unstable Unicorns is that it had universal appeal for both boys and girls, which is always a plus!
Top Trumps
Top Trumps is a classic from our childhoods (we’re probably giving away our age here!) but it has withstood the test of time. Top Trump decks are themed in just about every single way you could imagine – think bugs, dinosaurs, Disney Princesses, Harry Potter, James Bond, Marvel – if you can think of a genre there’s probably a pack of Top Trumps for it! Each pack contains around 30 cards, which will have characters/species or whatever the deck is themed by, and five ‘characteristics’ which relate to the cards (for example, animals may have speed, size etc) with statistics being correct for that individual. The deck is dealt evenly between players, and players then take it in turns to choose a characteristic from the list which they think will be higher than their opponent’s – continuing with the animal theme for example, a Cheetah would definitely win on speed, but an elephant would most likely win on size, so you’d want to choose their strongest characteristic. The player with the highest number in that characteristic wins their opponent’s card. This continues until one player holds all of the cards (or has won a pre-determined number of rounds) and is crowned the Top Trumps Champion! This game is best to play with children that have learned to read on a basic level and understand numbers up to 100 – but that being said, it’s fairly easy to grasp with a little help to start with and is hours of fun.
Dobble
This game is genius and really suitable for children aged around 4 or more – the best bit being that kids don’t have to have learned to read yet to play (which is where we find playing cards with our smaller children most difficult!) There are 55 circular cards in Dobble and each has 8 pictures or symbols on them – think a key, a heart or more complex pictures like a music note, crosshair, Ying and Yang. Players then have to match a symbol from their card to one on the card from the deck. Each player’s card will have one symbol that matches every other card (this sounds unbelievable but it somehow works, like Dobble magic!) The fastest player to shout their matching symbol gets to keep the top card, and the game ends at the end of the deck, with the winner being the player with the most cards. Sounds simple, but it’s engaging for children of all ages (there’s no time to get bored as it takes less than 5 minutes to play!) and can be surprisingly competitive! There are several ways to play Dobble (officially) but we find this is the most family-friendly way to play together. Highly recommended, particularly if you have younger children, and a great learning opportunity to identify symbols they may not be familiar with. There’s also a huge variety of versions of Dobble on the market such as beach theme, Pixar, Gruffalo and Super Mario – so if kids have a particular interest, these themed decks will make it much easier for them to play as they can shout out characters or items they are familiar with.
