The Best Board Games for 4-Year-Olds
Our series of the best board games for kids continues, and we’ve now made it to the 4-year-olds. What an amazing age for playing games together! Our kids are currently 7 and 4, so it’s a good time for us to reflect back on some of our favorite board games of all time for both our son and our daughter.
Quite a few of the games on this list are longtime favorites - many of them were among the very first board games we bought for our son. But you’ll also find a few new additions to our collection that our daughter only recently discovered and quickly fell in love with.
Assuming they’ve been playing basic board games for a couple of years now, 4-year-olds can be capable of quite a bit more than you might expect during family game night. The games on this list generally feature a little bit more abstract thinking and strategy than previous lists in this series, but they still have the attention span of little ones in mind. And, while cooperative games are still near and dear to our heart, you’ll find a few more competitive games on theses lists as kids get older as well.
You’ll likely notice that the games for this age range often focus on educational concepts like shapes and colors, which makes them great for gameschooling. But, honestly, the memory components and the strategy involved in most of these games is already more than enough reason to feel good about their brain-boosting benefits.
And perhaps my very favorite part about this list is that there isn’t a single game on it that our daughter and our son won’t play together. Our 4-year-old is 100% capable of playing all of these games, and her 7-year-old brother is still in love with all of them as well. It’s a great moment in time for family game night in our house, and we owe a lot of gratitude to the games on this list for a large amount amount of family fun.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. Clicking on those links will lead you to view the games’ listings on Amazon.
10. Hisss
Designed by Brigitte Pokornik and Published by Gamewright
Hisss is a very attractive card game about building and collecting long, colorful snakes. The theme is funny for us because my wife is scared of snakes and there’s lots of teasing and hissing going on as we play. It also recently made our list of the best board games to teach colors, so it’s certainly a great gameschooling game for little ones.
It’s definitely simple enough for 4-year-olds to grasp, and our daughter has always been a big fan of card games. I think a good way to describe this game is that it has an elegant, simple design which makes it a great pick-up-and-play game - and also a good one to travel with.
9. Lemonade Shake Up!
Designed by Shanon Lyon and Published by Peaceable Kingdom
Lemonade Shake Up! not only has a great summer theme which landed it on our list of kids games to play during summertime, it also has a classic game mechanic that’s a lot of fun to introduce to 4-year-olds. I’m talking about the classic Yahtzee mechanic - where you have 3 turns to roll and re-roll the dice to get the right combination.
In Lemonade Shake Up!, what you’re trying to roll is the right combination of lemons, sugar, strawberries or limes. You’re trying to craft the correct recipe for the customers at your lemonade stand, and inside the box you’ll even find the actual recipes to try yourself in the kitchen. The kids love it, and I love that it’s another wonderfully-crafted cooperative game from Peaceable Kingdom that the whole family can work together on.
8. Disney Princess: Enchanted Cupcake Party Game
Published by Wonder Forge
The Enchanted Cupcake Party Game finished very high on our list of board games for fans of unicorns and princesses and pink things, and it’s probably because it so seamlessly blends into imaginative playtime. Even if you don’t play by the rules, putting the cupcakes together and playing tea party is something that could keep our daughter happy for quite a long time.
The game itself features all of your favorite Disney princesses and they all have their own cupcake recipe they want you to make. It’s very cute, and very good practice for fine motor skills, to see little fingers work at putting the cupcakes together. Our 4-year-old is very much in love with this game, and her big brother is happy to play it with her as well. And by far it holds the record for most replays in a row in our house.
7. Go Away Monster!
Designed by Monty & Ann Stambler and Published by Gamewright
Go Away Monster! features a great theme and wonderful art. I'm always going to be partial towards a game that features bedtime and monsters, and this is no exception. And the theme has obviously made an impression on our daughter as well, because she grabs this one to play a lot.
I think she likes the simplicity of the game. You simply grab a shape out of a bag at random and, if it’s a piece of furniture that you need, you place it in your bedroom. Drawing a monster however, is basically like losing a turn. What kids are working on is matching and shapes. It’s actually a great skill for young kids to reach into a bag and feel around for something that feels like a circle, a triangle, or a rectangle. It’s quick to play and a good opportunity to use a little imagination as well.
6. Dinosaur Escape
Designed by Shanon Lyon, Marisa Pena, & Colt Tipton-Johnson and Published by Peaceable Kingdom
Dinosaur Escape was one of the very first games we bought for our son several years ago, and it’s held up as one of our favorite family board games all of this time. It’s published by Peaceable Kingdom, and that means it features fantastic cooperative gameplay. And, if your little ones happen to be dinosaur fans, this one is a no-brainer.
As a team, you’re trying to help three dinosaurs escape an island before the volcano erupts. To illustrate this theme, you actually construct a little cardboard volcano in the middle of the game board - which is a really nice touch. It’s a well-crafted combination of roll-and-move and a memory game, and the little dinosaur figurines are fantastic to play with. It will always hold a nostalgic place in our hearts and remind us of working together as a team during family game night.
5. The Fairy Game
Designed by Betsy Snyder and Published by Peaceable Kingdom
The Fairy Game is a relatively new discovery for us from Peaceable Kingdom. It features a very original storyline where you’re trying to collect the magic gems from flowers - but mean Mr. Winter is trying to freeze the flowers before you get the chance.
This one is a cooperative card-based game where you’re trying to collect matching sets of cards so you can turn them in to collect the gems. You can make decisions together and even trade cards with each other on your turn. For us, the complexity of this game is perfect for our 4-year-old and 7-year-old to play together. And our daughter in particular is really in love with the aesthetics. There’s a very good chance that she’ll put on her Tinkerbell costume before playing.
4. Snail Sprint!
Designed by Marie & Wilfried Fort and Published by HABA
Snail Sprint! is a game that’s amazing for practicing both colors and shapes with your kids. It also features a very innovative design that incorporates magnetic pieces. The metal game box is actually part of the playing surface, and the magnetic snails actually crawl up and over it.
Each player holds a secret card telling them which snails they want to get to the finish line first. There’s a bit of abstract thought and strategy involved in this one, and some 4-year-olds will undoubtedly need help occasionally deciding which snail to move. But it’s undeniable that our daughter loves playing this game a lot. The magnets are certainly a lot of fun, and we aren’t going to be growing out of this one anytime soon either.
3. Unicorn Glitterluck: A Party for Rosalie
Designed by Kristin Mückel and Published by HABA
We’ve written about our love for the Unicorn Glitterluck games before, and A Party for Rosalie is the game from this series that I think is a perfect fit for this list. It features a little bit more strategy than Cloud Crystals, and it might honestly be my favorite Unicorn Glittlerluck game to play with the kids too.
All of Rosalie’s friends are trying to plan a birthday party for little Rosalie before she gets home. This storyline also happens to be our daughter’s go-to storyline for any imaginative play that we do, and she may very well have gotten the idea from this game. Along the way you have to collect all of the animal friends and all of the cloud crystals. It’s also a cooperative game, and you know how much we love that.
2. My First Carcassonne
Designed by Marco Teubner and Published by Z-Man Games
My First Carcassonne was one of our very first board games and it’s a true classic now as far as I’m concerned. It’s an incredibly simplified version of the world-famous Carcassonne, and it’s great for a wide range of ages. It’s one of those brilliant games that’s easy enough for young kids to understand, but also easily gets the competitive juices flowing for my wife and I as well.
The scoring system is quite simple. Basically you’re just trying to be the first to get rid of all of your meeple. Everyone has their own color, and you take turns placing tiles and trying to complete roads. There are people of different colors on the artwork, and, when a road is completed, you get to place your meeple on the board if they match your colors. My First Carcassonne is truly perfect for family game night with kids of different ages. It’s fun that our son still enjoys it after all of these years and it will definitely be in rotation for many years to come.
1. Story Time Chess
Designed and Published by Story Time Chess
Teaching chess to kids is my full time job, and it’s no secret that I believe in the benefits of chess for kids. We were also so blown away by the potential of Story Time Chess that we recently wrote a featured article if you want to read more. The bottom line is, if you are interested in introducing the amazing game of chess to your young child, Story Time Chess is a great place to start.
The reason that Story Time Chess works so great with young children is that it takes the abstract concept of these pieces that move in different, arbitrary ways, and attaches characters and stories to them to help kids remember. Books and games are the two main pillars of Dad Suggests, and I absolutely love the concept of combining stories with chess. And I love how these very well-designed characters lend themselves to imaginative play with my daughter. These endearing characters actually make her want to repeat lessons, and you can’t ask for more than that.
For more of the best family board games for each age, make sure to read:
The Best Board Games for 2-Year-Olds
The Best Board Games for 3-Year-Olds
The Best Board Games for 5-Year-Olds
The Best Board Games for 6-Year-Olds
The Best Board Games for 7-Year-Olds
The Best Board Games for 8-Year-Olds
What is your 4-year-old’s favorite board game? Have you tried any of the games on on our family’s list? Let us know in the comments!
