There's a big difference between a three year old who has just turned three and one who is nearly four. We've got a three and a half year old (as well as a six year old who loves board games with a passion). He has just got the hang of moving pieces forward based on the roll of a dice.

He has played Uno (without the scoring and with face up hands of cards) for a while now. The other game he has been able to play and that I recommend as not being as painful for adults as some, is an Orchard Toys game called 'Where's my cupcake?', but he's only just at the snakes and ladders type stage. We played a lot of Sorry too with my six year old when he was about 4-4.5. The other thing we have done is having the three year old 'on a team' with an adult, but that obviously works better with multiple kids.

One they hit 4.5/5, there are tons of games you can play with them. That's when things start get to fun! Basically, I wouldn't worry yet - they just have to get to the right stage developmentally which they will do.

Try teaching them to count with dice. Roll the dice, choose/count N objects, and try to have them do the same.

Isn't 3yo a bit too early? I mean, at three years old a child is legally smart enough not to swallow the dice... but I thought knowing how to interpret numbers and apply them is a bit more advanced than knowing not to eat the numbery thing. ;)

3 years old is definitely not too early to start playing structured games.

At first, early on, games should be very simple. The idea is to focus solely on the basic structure of games:

     --game start 
     --keep attention on game
     --turn taking/following in correct sequence
     --problem solving around a very simple goal
     --game end
     --with finally very clear assessment of player ranking (i.e. You won, I/we lost or I won, You lost)

Underlying all this should be a heavy focus on the maintenance of appropriate emotional responses and behavior modeling (e.g., no gloating, no sore losers, no emotional aggression or defensiveness).

Again, this is all ground-floor stuff, so kids can start learning it as early as 2-ish. Learning to take turns is a huge emotional advantage. As is learning how to both succeed and fail in games and life with grace.

A very good game that has a degree of complexity appropriate to kids that young is "Animal Upon Animal" by HABA.[0]

It's a simple stacking game: On your turn, stack this animal on that animal; if the stack of animals falls over, that's the fail state. (There is a 6-sided dice with pictures on 4 of its faces, and 1 and 2 pips on the the remaining, but it can easily be removed from the game until the child in question is ready for it.)

[0]http://a.co/bJ8syTL

Not at all. Candyland is recommended for children ages 3-6 and Chutes and Ladders 3-7. Both are good intros to the concept of board games.

I try to avoid telling a 3 year old what they are incapable of doing.

The 3 year old will tell you what they want to do.

At 3, my little guy's favorite toy was rated for 8+ years old, and his favorite game was chess.

He never cared if he won or lost at chess, his primary purpose was to push his pawns, castle, and then get in at least one en passant.

Yeah fair enough, I was just wondering about the future. How did you build up to a full board game with your kid? What were the phases? 1. Succeed in not eating the dice 2. ??? 3. Play a game of Sorry! within the rules.

The intermediate step here is what Candyland does.

It won't be very long and your child will be teaching YOU games that she/he learned from friends. :)

> I'm trying to figure out how to show him the "move N places forward" mechanic where N is the number on the die.

Maybe start with hopscotch (the regular kind with where you toss an object into a square, but with clearly numbered squares), telling them each time the number of the square they're on, the number of the square they're heading to, and the number of hops they'll do, before they do them. After a while, they'll get an understanding of how the numbers on the squares relate to what you're saying, and maybe even a vague intuition for subtraction.

Eventually, you can replace the thrown object with a rolled die (I suggest a big soccer-ball-sized die they can see from far away, with numbered faces instead of pips)—whose roll indicates how many spaces they should move rather than the space they should move to—and keep playing the same game.

Once they get that, then they're ready to play board games.

My 2.5 year old did my dice rolling in Trivial Pursuit last night (1970s retro Australian edition). I just made a big thing of showing her the number on the die, reading it aloud, then moving the piece that many spaces while counting up. She is interested because she seems to see the social significance of the dice throw within the game environment, but not fully aware of the movement options/significance. That's OK. Using numbers at all is good at this age. I wonder at what cognitive level children interpret randomness, such as dice throws.

There are games that are simpler and better for kids than trying to get them to slog through Monopoly or whatever.

My First Carcassonne and Sushi Go! are two we like and they're playable for adults too. (A lot of kids games are terrible, ones based on licenses like Disney or Paw Patrol for example.)

Also check out Peaceable Kingdom they make cooperative games for kids (Hoot Owl Hoot, Race to The Treasure, etc.) I haven't played them personally but based on reviews some families really enjoy them a lot.

FYI: http://www.peaceablekingdom.com/ may be hacked or was sometime in the past. The site wasn't loading so I tried archive.is and the cooperative games link on the home page loaded a porn site

Spiel Des Jahres has a children's category. The 2016 winner was Stone Age Junior and the 2015 one was Spinderella.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiel_des_Jahres

While not a dice game, my daughter really loved Sequence for Kids when she was 3. She was able to follow the rules and learn to play.

https://smile.amazon.com/Jax-8001-Sequence-for-Kids/dp/B0000...

Try "Animal Upon Animal" by HABA.[0] It's an excellent game for kids exactly that young. Very simple stacking game. I highly recommend it. It'll teach turn taking and goal oriented thinking.

http://a.co/bJ8syTL[0]

We bought Orchard by Haba for our 2yo and she absolutely loved it, still plays it sometimes 2yrs later, and it motivated her interest in board games in general.

Thank you, I've never heard of this game but the Amazon reviews look great. Do you have any other board games recommendations for 3-5 year olds?

Matching memory games are something my daughter got into shortly before turning 4. We acquired a copy of Trouble from somebody and she likes that too.

I play Snail's Pace Race with my three year old. The rules are simple and it's not competitive.

Tie the level of dessert to the rarity of the dice roll. :-) (oh, and don't explain the game).