Yeah man…depends on teh difficulty of the game? Monopoly? 37. Shutes and Ladders…about 4.
Interesting.
I would say that it has to go Checkers, Chess, Go.
I’m 24 and Im still trying to wrap my head around Go.
To the general OP, how ever, each kid is different, will take his or her time. I remember I got so pisssed off when my parents bought me Monopoly JR, and I had already seen Monopoly… the two games dont compare.
Then again, I also started playing Uno at a younger age.
But Its a good idea to try the games that are thought of as childs games… I think one game company still has a “My first games” brand. Cootie and Candy Land etc. fall in there.
Then again Cootie, Ants in the Pants, Dont Spill the beans, Dont break the ice… those “Cootie” games (Cootie is the brand, not genre) helps out a lot too.
Wow. And I thought all my Knowlege working at The Game Keeper left me. Man I hate that, they were bought out.
I took a chess class after school when I was in the fourth grade, and there were several first graders in the class. They held their own very well. When my oldest niece was 5-6, I taught her the rudiments of the game while on a trip, and she understood, but we haven’t played since.
-Lil
I read Little Nemo’s post as saying that a kid won’t really understand that category of game until she’s developed rudimentary skills in that area already, or at least the neurological and psycho-developmental ability, and then the game will further refine and deepen that skill. And while I don’t have any stats, I do have two kids and have nannied/babysat probably three dozen others over the years, and it feels accurate to me. That’s why games have age ranges on the box. A normal 3 year old is just not neurologically capable of understanding probability and the importance of what she can’t see in front of her, so a 3 year old (barring a prodigy, of course), is just not going to “get” poker. They might hold the cards, but their bids will be wild, they’ll ask for too many or not enough cards, or they see two pair and think they’ve won, without considering what the other guy has. That’s not really playing the game, IMHO. You can’t really play the game until you grok that what the other guy probably has is even more important than what you have. Once you get that, you might still be a bad player, but that will change with experience, as you sharpen that skill through use. (For more, see Piaget’s theories of cognitive development.)
One of the best early games, IMHO, is Mancala . It’s very easy, and doesn’t even require counting (although without counting, it’s a luck game, with counting, it’s a strategy game.) My 2 year old is starting to “get” that one, although as someone else said, she’s completely indifferent to winning. But she’s learning taking turns, sharing, and having fun plinking pretty pieces of seaglass into wooden cups. Best of all, once I’ve taught her the basics at home, we can make a Mancala game out of anything - sugar packets at a restaurant (with a pen to make circles on the back of the placemat), pebbles and sticks in the woods, rolled up bits of paper and a paper board at the airport…