Have you ever heard of the “Spiel des Jahres”?  If not, you are not alone.  I hadn’t heard of this prestigious award until I bought my first “eurogame”.  This relatively new genre of board games coming out of Europe tend to  be very fun, strategic, board games for families.  The first game of this type that I bought was a Carcassonne game called New World.  (You can view my post about how we modified this Carcassonne game to work for our preschoolers.)  When we opened the box there was a little flyer in it listing other Rio Grande Games that had won the Spiel des Jahres award.  (Carcassonne won in 2001).  I decided to learn a little more about the Spiel des Jahres as we started to enjoy many of the games that were listed in this brochure.

Spiel des Jahres (game of the year)

My husband and I are avid game players and this trait has rubbed off on our children (ages 3 and 5). We have bought a few games specifically made for younger children, but they don’t tend to be very exciting for grown-ups to get involved in WITH the kids. So we have come up with variations on games that we enjoy that enable our kids to participate with us. Here are a few examples of games we’ve modified successfully:

Board Games For Families

Bohnanza – Planting and harvesting beans to collect coins
TransAmerica – A race to build train tracks between all your cities
Rook – Collecting “tricks” to earn the most points
Carcassonne New World- Earn points by dominating cities, roads, and farms

Last night we pulled out our Carcassonne game and decided to try it out with our two kids. Here is a summary of some modified rules/tips if you try it with your own preschoolers.

Carcassonne Rules (modified for little ones)

• In the New World version of Carcassonne there is an added component called “Surveyors” which cause you to have to wipe your “meeples” off the board as they move across. When playinng with younger children … SKIP this aspect of the game completely.
• Allow your child to enjoy building roads and cities at will. Don’t try to dictate too much strategy to them. They will have fun thinking of it like a puzzle and as they get older they will start to develop the strategic thought process that goes along with this seemingly simple game.
• Have your pre-schooler do all of the movements to keep score. This will help him to work on his math and counting skills. Who knew the Carcassonne games could be “math board games” as well?
• Don’t try too hard to really beat your child. This should be obvious but if you are playing with a competitive spouse you can tend to get caught up in beating him/her (not speaking from personal experience here or anything). You don’t have to be obvious about letting your little one win, but don’t be too vicious either or it sucks the fun out of it.
• Read the official Rio Grande Games Carcassonne: New World rules to learn more about the traditional playing of this fun game.

Our 5 year old was able to play the modified board game for families and he totally understood the game play. Our 3 year old just wanted to lay her pieces down in the middle of our board and got ticked when we tried to move them out of the way Gotta love kids!