We love cooperative games!
Sometimes kids (and even adults) can get caught up in the “winning” (and “losing”) aspect of board games. What I love about cooperative games is that they remove the competitiveness of players playing against each other. Instead, all players are on the same team, working toward the same goal – often all players are competing against a pretend opponent within the game (for example, the raven in HABA’s My First Orchard). Because players are all working together, it brings the focus of gameplay back to what board games should be about – having FUN!

For our kids, cooperative games were a great way to become familiar with the rules of “game play”. For example, taking turns, rolling dice, spinning a spinner, and moving pieces. This is one reason that I recommend cooperative games as great “first games”. See my article on Favorite Board Games for 2-year-olds.

There are lots of benefits to playing cooperative games with kids. Cooperative games encourage teamwork and positive social relationships as players help one another. Kids develop important social skills, like listening, sharing ides and supporting each other, which make cooperative games great for kids of all ages!

This article is my first in a new series, focusing on cooperative games by age! Use these posts as a loose guideline- just because a board game shows up in a list for one age, doesn’t mean that it can’t be enjoyed by kids of other ages as well!!