Here are two more family games we love to play, ranging in ages from four to adult:

         Monopoly, Pokemon Monopoly, Lord of the Rings Monopoly.  The Monopoly games are fun to rediscover with young kids. My four-year-old and my seven-year-old actually manage to play this all by themselves! The Lord of the Rings version has a built-in timer, and I highly recommend playing the shortened or timed versions in the others. We once played the long version all the way to the end and it took a good four hours!

            Lord of the Rings Cooperative Board Game. This is a cooperative board game, where all the players are hobbits helping each other to destroy the ring. It’s fun and engaging, with four or more different boards to get through to represent the various places in the story (Moria, Helm’s Deep, Shelob’s Lair, etc.) This one is more complicated and takes time to learn, and the younger players will be easily dominated by a strong personality in decision-making, so it’s recommended for older players. The basic game is fun, will take about an hour or a little more to play, and we lose about 30% of the time, which entices us to try again. However, there are two expansions (Friends & Foes and a Sauron expansion) which change everything dramatically. We added both expansions at the same time. Now one player can play Sauron, and the game has become so difficult that we can never get all the way to Mount Doom; usually we don’t even get close. The game takes too long and we end in defeat every single time. (The Sauron expansion does this.) The kids do enjoy playing Sauron, but the Sauron player does a lot of sitting around doing nothing while the game drags on. I’d like to try and win this some day but I’ll need all adult or teen players I think, to do it.