Best Board Games for 3 Year Olds

 

The Best 5 Board Games for 3 Year Olds

There is nothing better than family game nights, especially while your kids are still young. Get the fun started early, with a great batch of board games for 3 year olds. Once our kids hit the teenage years, it can be hard to keep everyone together. So start early!

Oftentimes, parents are apprehensive about playing board games with preschoolers. Don’t get too caught up with the negatives. Preschool age is the best time to have them associate simple rules with having fun. 

Board games geared towards the 3 year old crowd are often team games or games featuring easy competition. Board games for 3 year olds can offer great learning opportunities for all sorts of things. Whether its numbers, letters, colors, vocabulary, or critical thinking, board games for 3 year olds are good brain builders. 

Here are our 5 favorite board games for 3 year olds. You should consider any one of these for your little one’s next birthday or surprise present.

Our top Board Games for 3 year olds 

best board games for 3 year olds
Peaceable Kingdom Feed the Woozle Educational Insights The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game Hi Ho Cherry-O Peaceable Kingdom Stack Up! Award Winning Preschool Skills Builder Game Wonder Forge Richard Scarry’s Busytown, Eye Found It
2-5 players 2-4 players 2-4 players 2-6 players 2-6 players
For ages: 3+ For ages: 3+ For ages: 3-6 For ages: 3-5 For ages: 3+
Cooperative game? Yes Cooperative game? No Cooperative game? No Cooperative game? Yes Cooperative game? Yes
Teaches: Counting, Dexterity, Motor Skills, Balance, Body Awareness Teaches: Colors, Matching Teaches: Colors, Counting, Matching Teaches: Color-matching, Balance Teaches: Counting
Check Price Check Price Check Price Check Price Check Price
  • best board games for 3 year olds

  • Peaceable Kingdom Feed the Woozle Award Winning Preschool Skills Builder Game
  • 2-4 players
  • For ages: 3-6
  • Cooperative game? Yes
  • Teaches: Colors, Shapes, Numbers, Counting
  • Check Price
  • Educational Insights The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game
  • 2-4 players
  • For ages: 3+
  • Cooperative game? No
  • Teaches: Colors, Matching
  • Check Price
  • Hi Ho Cherry-O
  • 2-4 players
  • For ages: 3-6
  • Cooperative game? No
  • Teaches: Colors, Counting, Matching
  • Check Price
  • Peaceable Kingdom Stack Up! Award Winning Preschool Skills Builder Game
  • 2-6 players
  • For ages: 3-5
  • Cooperative game? Yes
  • Teaches: Color-matching, Balance
  • Check Price
  • Wonder Forge Richard Scarry’s Busytown, Eye Found It
  • 2-6 players
  • For ages: 3+
  • Cooperative game? Yes
  • Teaches: Counting
  • Check Price
 


Peaceable Kingdom Feed the Woozle

best board games for 3 year olds

To start with, we’ve put Feed the Woozle at the top of our board games for 3 year olds recommendations because of the fun factor. It teaches your young one dexterity, gross motor skills, body awareness, balance, language development, and counting! First, it’s incredible that a simple board game can do so much for the development of a child. Plus, it offers enough variation for a multitasking parent to stay relatively engaged. 

The idea behind this game is that the “Woozle” loves eating hairy pickles and fuzzy donuts. Accordingly, and working together, players help feed him 12 crazy treats before all of the snacks are gone.

One of the best parts about Feed the Woozle is that it can grow with your child, because it has three different levels. Feed the Woozle makes a good board game for 3 year olds, but you could start your 2 year old off with this too. The game doesn’t require any reading, so even very young children can participate in this game! In additional to all of the wonderful developmental benefits of this game, children will also learn how to take turns. So if you have kids spaced apart by a year or two, this is a good way to help them guide in social skill development. Feed the Woozle is also a nice game for the kids on early age playtime get togethers.

Cooperative games such as this one are known to support emotional development, positive self esteem, shared decision making, and creative problem solving. They can also develop a sense of community through a non-stressful play environment.

Your child is sure to love playing this game, and you’ll have fun playing with them! The best part about it is that you’ll get to directly see the benefits that they gain from it.


Educational Insights The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game

2

Depending on where you live, there’s a good chance your child has already been exposed to outdoor animals. Maybe you have a cat or dog in the house who goes nuts watching squirrels from the kitchen window. Either way, the Sneaky Snacky Squirrel is a good segue into teaching your kids about the great outdoors. 

This can be a thrilling and multi-functional board game for 3 year olds. The squirrels are hungry and it is up to the players to collect five acorns in order to win.

Each player takes turns spinning the spinner and then using the large squirrel tweezers to retrieve an acorn and put it into the matching color on their own log.

Not only does this exciting game help to teach colors and matching, it also helps to teach strategy with options like “lose” “steal” and “pick” an acorn. The use of the squirrel tweezers helps to develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. 

This game also helps with great social skills like turn-taking and good sportsmanship. So, it’s great for playing amongst siblings and little friends. Keep in mind, the “acorns” that come with the game are small and can present a choking hazard. If your child is still in the stages of eating random objects, wait a few more months on this one.


Hi Ho Cherry-O

3

A fantastic fall activity for the little ones is going fruit picking. This might be in an apple orchard if you live in the right climate, or maybe an orange grove. The late stage toddler years are formative. So, board games for 3 year olds that offer fun introductions to the outside world are particularly beneficial. 

Hi Ho Cherry-O is a timeless classic game for 3 year olds and preschoolers that makes counting fun for everyone!

Each player chooses a fruit (cherries, blueberries, oranges, or apples) and races to fill their fruit basket first. Turns are taken with the spinner where the player gets to count the number and put that number of fruit into their basket. Otherwise, their basket spills or a bird eats a piece of fruit, and they must return fruit to the tree. Whichever player fills their basket first wins!

This fun game teaches social skills such as turn-taking, patience, and good sportsmanship (not everyone is the winner!). Furthermore Hi Ho Cherry-O helps to teach and reinforce math skills like addition and subtraction in an exciting way.


Peaceable Kingdom Stack Up! Award Winning Preschool Skills Builder Game

4

Stack 12 blocks before the Stack Smasher comes!

In this fun, low-stress, cooperative game, players work together to stack 12 blocks before the Stack Smasher smashes their tower. To begin with, they spin once to find out which color of block they must add to the tower, and spin again. On this second spin, they’ll get a tricky challenge for adding the block. One challenge might be putting the block on top of the stack with their eyes closed.

There are three levels and sets of directions to play this game so that it grows with the children and their abilities. Stack Up! is the kind of game that can still be lots of fun to play for several years.

Stack Up! teaches great hand-eye coordination for kids, as well as color matching and balance. Lastly, it’s a great game for reinforcing teamwork in a playful and positive manner.


Wonder Forge Richard Scarry’s Busytown, Eye Found It

5

This game includes a game board that is over six feet long! In summary, players will have to work together as a team while they bustle through Richard Scarry’s World of Busytown on an adventure. Throughout the game, they’ll be searching for secret objects.

Pig Will and Pig Won’t are on a task to gobble up all the food on Picnic Island. It is the players’ goal to find all the hidden objects in Busytown before the piggies eat everything. Each player takes a turn spinning the spinner in order to make a move. The players aim to make it onto the ferry and to Picnic Island before the pigs have devoured all the food. Finally, once they’ve escaped to the ferry, they win!

Teamwork is imperative for this interactive and engaging game, and it also teaches counting and turn-taking. This age is a truly critical time for connecting your child with the idea that success often depends on cooperation. If your kid can enter preschool with a team player mindset already grained, they’re on the right track. 

Furthermore, this is a great board game for 3 year olds because it presents a truly imaginative world. Every parent wants their kids to have a budding imagination to keep the creative juices flowing.


Board Games for 3 Year Olds: Final Thoughts

If you are ready to introduce board games to your little tyke, go ahead and play one of these great games. Any one of them is sure to be a hit with your kid and with you too. As a rule, for parents, it’s important to stay engaged with your child when you’re playing. Undoubtedly, all parents have to multi-task here and there, but you want to be sure your kid is on the right path. Therefore, when you’re playing board games with your 3 year old, leave the phone in the next room.

Looking for more board games for 3 year olds? Check out our guide to the best strategy board games of all time and our list of board games with marbles. Have you played any of these games? Leave your thoughts in the comments section, tell us what you think!

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