Best Board Games for 5-Year-Olds of 2021

In Rhino Hero, players take turns to place walls and lay roof cards to build a collaborative tower. At specific, random points, you help the rhino climb the tower without demolishing it.

The winner is the first to use all of their cards, or if the tower tumbles, you all win. Or lose.

Some roof cards have additional symbols to indicate a change of play direction or that the next player skips a turn. This adds an element of strategy which keeps it interesting.

Also, for 5-year-olds, Rhino Hero Super Battle has more cards, additional animal heroes, and evil monkeys to contend with. This is an excellent choice for an upgrade if you enjoy the basic game.

Players move their pawns around the board, attempting to collect several objects. The pawns have a magnet at their base, which allows them to “hold” a steel ball against the board’s underside. As your pawn moves across the surface, the ball is pulled along with it.

The game board sits on a box, and inside there’s a maze you can’t see while you’re playing. If your pawn moves over a wall in the labyrinth, your steel ball is knocked off, and you return to your starting point.

To collect all of your items and reach your endpoint, you must remember where the walls are and avoid them. Walls are set randomly, so the maze is different for every game.

This version of Ticket to Ride has a map that includes the U.S. and a sliver of Southern Canada.

Players have “tickets” for different cities and connect them on the map by placing their trains and claiming the routes.

Kids learn the basics of U.S. geography, which you can expand on outside the game. Meanwhile, the cartoon graphics and cute plastic trains are appealing to kids, but not so childlike that they’ll be off-putting for the target age-range.

There’s another children’s version with the same gameplay but a map of Europe and multiple adult versions to move to as your kids grow.

To play Dragon’s Breath, players take turns to remove rings from the ice column, releasing gems. Gems that fall in certain areas are taken out of play, and the remaining gems are divided among players according to color. The player with the most gems after the last ring is removed wins.

This sounds overly simple, but there are enough variables to make it fun and exciting.

As a bonus, the game is played on a platform on the box, and gems go into the box as you play. That makes clean-up a cinch.

Players start in the center of the board and travel the grid in any direction. Simultaneously, the fox begins at one end and moves along the path through the middle. A throw of the dice determines whether the player or the fox moves.

Land on a clue space and you can put a token into the “decoder” and reveal the clue. Clues are shared among all players, and you work together to solve the mystery before the fox makes it across the board.

Bugs in the Kitchen is played within the box. At each end, there are two “bug traps.” Barriers are set into the board, and these barriers, which are shaped like knives and forks, can be turned in different directions.

To begin, you release the robotic HexBug. The bug runs around the maze, and on your turn, you throw the dice to discover whether to turn a knife or fork. The aim of the game is to turn the utensils and guide the bug into one of the traps.

The owner of the trap receives a bug token, and the first to five bugs wins.

The aim of My First Carcassonne is to place all eight of your wooden figures on the map, but that is easier said than done.

Players choose one of the four colors to play as, and the map tiles are stacked in random piles on the table. Players take a map tile from the top of any pile and turn it face up. They then connect one end of a road on their tile to the open end of a road on the existing map.

If the tile you add to the map features a child in the color you have chosen, you place one of your wooden people on the map.

All players begin in the “village” area at one end of the board. Each of the 13 trees has a picture on the base and is placed next to the 13 blue squares. If you land on a blue square, peek under the tree next to it and remember which picture is where.

At the other end of the board is the king’s castle area, where the treasure cards sit. A card is turned over to reveal a treasure. If you can remember which tree you saw the treasure under, race to the castle and be the first to reveal its location.

Blokus is a square grid onto which shaped pieces are placed. Each player gets the same 21 pieces, all of which are between one and five squares in different configurations.

Players take turns to place one piece on the board at a time. You begin in your corner and work outwards. Pieces must touch another of the same color, but they can only touch at the corner.

The game ends when someone has laid all of their pieces or when no more pieces can be laid. The winner is the first to lay all their pieces or the one with the fewest squares left.

It sounds overly simple, but it keeps the adults in our house playing for hours.

Stepping “stones” of different colors are scattered across the floor. One player spins the arrow to choose a color, and players must jump onto a tile of that color. The spinner determines who was last to land on a tile and removes the stepping stone from which they jumped.

If you can’t find a stone of the correct color to jump to, or if you touch the ground between the stones, you’re out. The last player in the game wins.

Some stepping stones have actions on them, such as “dance like a ballerina.” If you land on one of these tiles, you must perform the action, but this element can be left out if you prefer.

Wildcraft is a collaborative game in which you climb a mountain by moving around the board. On the way, players must collect 26 edible and medicinal plant cards to cure 31 ailments. Then they must return to grandma’s house before nightfall.

To ensure everyone has an objective and feels included, each player also has to collect two huckleberries while at the top of the mountain.

There’s no need for prior knowledge, and everything you need to know is within the game. Kids can also take the cards out and about and use them to identify the plants they find.

The newest incarnation of Scrabble Junior is two word games in one.

On the “easy” side of the board, there’s a grid with pre-printed words and a numbered pathway around the outside. Players take letter tiles in the same way as traditional Scrabble. Instead of making words, they match their tiles to letters in a word on the board.

You earn points for different letters and completing a word. You move your figure around the outer pathway, and first to the finish wins.

On the reverse side, you play Scrabble in the traditional way, but without the premium squares such as double letter scores.

Brain Freeze consists of two draw-on/wipe-off game boards. Each board has two pieces, which clip together easily to form an L-shape. The larger section has a 10×10 grid with a picture of a frozen treat printed in each square.

First, players choose a target square and mark the color, picture, and square location on their board’s vertical section. They then take turns to ask each other questions to work out the treat, the color, and the location the other player has chosen.

Think of it as a simple Guess Who meets Battleship, with ice-creams and lollipops.

The aim of the game is to create snakes that are as long as possible. Every snake must have a head, a tail, and at least one body section, and the longer you can make your snake, the better.

Players take a card, turn it over, and try to match it to a card already laid to lengthen or complete a snake. If you can’t match your card, it’s placed on the table, and another snake is started.

If you complete a snake, you take the cards. The player with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

Two different Clue Junior sets are available — The Case of the Broken Toy and The Case of the Missing Cake. Rules and gameplay are the same for both — the only difference is the mystery you’re solving.

Players must discover the “who,” “what,” and “when” of the mystery by moving around the board to view picture clues. Clue cards are laid face-down on the board, and when you view a clue, you mark it off on your pre-printed detective pad.

When you have eliminated all but one possibility for who, what, and when you can solve the mystery. Players can move any character, making it easy to play with any number, but puzzle-solving is not collaborative.

The aim of the game is to move around the board, visiting locations such as the zoo or water park.

The in-board spinner tells you how many spaces to move. Land on an attraction and you pay an entry fee. Land on a yellow square and you take an action card and perform the action on the card, such as “act like a lion.”

If your child can’t read, you need at least three players for a game, or the charades part doesn’t work. You receive a star for each attraction you visit, and for every action, the other players correctly guess. The first player to ten stars wins.

In Sums In Space, players race around the board, move past the black hole, escape the planet, and get back home. They do this by solving single-digit addition and subtraction equations.

Players roll the three dice and get two numbers between 0 and 9 and either an addition or subtraction sign. They arrange the die to form an equation, solve the equation, and move the squares’ resulting number on the board. First, one to the end wins.

When a player rolls a zero in collaborative mode, the rocket is moved one square down the countdown ladder. If everyone gets to the end before the rocket reaches zero, everyone wins. If the rocket reaches zero, the game is over.

Monopoly Junior is similar to the adult version but has 24 squares on the board instead of 40. Houses, hotels, Community Chest, utilities, railroads, and tax squares are all eliminated, and rather than specific places, the properties are things like the zoo and boardwalk.

Players move around the board buying properties, avoiding jail, and picking up Chance cards. If you land on a property owned by another player, you pay rent.

Players who cannot pay their bills are eliminated. The remaining players sell their properties back to the bank, count their money, and the player with the most cash wins.

The traditional Operation from your childhood is alive and well, slightly updated for kids of today.

Cavity Sam lays on his hospital bed, and budding doctors must use a steady hand to remove those pesky plastic pieces from his body. If the attached plastic-coated metal tweezers touch his body, then, bbbzzzzzzzz, your turn is over.

The only difference between the traditional version and this updated one is that the cards are of better quality and have modern graphics and colors.

Operation: Pet Scan mixes things up a little by having a maze to move the game pieces through, and special theme editions are also available, including Operation Star Wars The Mandalorian Edition, Operation Disney-Pixar Finding Dory, and Operation Star Wars Chewbacca Edition.

In Risk Junior, players move their pirate ships around the map to find treasure and take control of the islands.

Unlike regular Risk, which island is attacked and who wins is determined by a roll of the dice. It’s entirely down to chance. While this takes the strategy element out of the game, it does prevent anyone from being ganged up on by other players.

The chance element means the game can be over in as little as ten minutes but can run to well past an hour, which becomes grueling and rather dull.