My 4 year olds favorite games

by Kathleen Walrath
(Corning, NY)

I have a four year old boy and we play two games quite often. The first game is Animal Domino's. He loves this game as he can learn the different animals and match them together making sure we have the correct animals matched. We talk about the difference between the lion, leapord and panther as our set has all three of these in it. We also talk about the difference in the monkey and gorilla. I think this is a great learning tool for him.

The other game we play together is Yatzee. This is stated for an older child but he like matching the numbers and putting them in sets and runs to get his points. We are also working on adding the smaller numbers together so that he will be advanced with his math skills. Of course his favorite part of Yahtzee is shaking the dice. Our dice have different color dots on them so if he roll a one it is the color red and he will look for either the one spot or the color red. He really likes it when he gets multiple colors out that he can choose from. This is a great activity for matching and adding.

The biggest part of all of the game playing that we do is teaching him to share and take turns. I found that when we first started he had problems waiting for his turn but now he knows that he must wait for all players to take their turns. His sister who is eight is a great teacher of sportsmanship and is more than willing to help him out.