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Three fun games for the whole family

Lately, Saturday night is game night in our household. John and I let our friends know we'll be home and invite them to come on over with their kids. We never really know who will show up, but people always do!

We do know we'll have a blast playing games. Sometimes we go with Rock Band for the Xbox 360, or sometimes we get physical with Wii Sports. And still other times we go for old-fashioned non-electronic games. The most fun thing for us is how our kids are getting old enough to play along with us!

The Boy, at almost eight, is surprisingly good at Catch Phrase. In this game, one person reads a word on a card (there's also an electronic version, but we don't have it), and has to get the rest of the team to guess the word. I was amazed that he could read fast enough and think on his feet, coming up with good clues for the word.

The cutest moments, though, are when he sounds a word out and applies the wrong meaning (for homonyms - two words that sound the same). For example, once his clue was "the money you have to pay the king" for one word. I guessed, "Tax!" and he said correct and passed me the card. When I looked down to forward to the next word, I noticed the word on the card was actually "tack." But how adorable is that?

There are also some great games made by Ravensburger. One in particular is called Labyrinth. In this game, each player is working his or her way through a shifting maze, trying to reach various treasures. The rules can be modified slightly to allow children to play with adults, though after a few initial tries The Boy caught on - and now he's just as likely to win as an adult. The game requires both luck and skill, and adults who aren't expert chess players don't have much of an advantage over the kids.

Ravensburger also makes a game called Make 'N Break, where players have to build block structures shown on cards. Each structure is worth a different number of points, depending on how complex it is. The players have to build as many structures as they can before time runs out. The way we play with both kids and adults is that the tiniest kids have the most time, the older kids have the second-most, and the adults have the least. This way, the scores come out fairly even, though there is usually an ultimate winner.

I think it's actually important to play with the kids. They learn to win and lose gracefully, and the games build spatial and language skills. Of course, I would never tell them that - to the kids, it's all about having fun!