If you are planning a St Patrick’s Day party for children, board games are essential. Here are some board games appropriate for the preschool crowd.

The Magical Rainbow is a fun irish board game about a leprechaun who travels around a magical rainbow giving out his gold to people in need.  The board game teaches kids about sharing and also gives them a fun way to use their imaginations.  The board game for kids ages 4 and up is also magnetic and we all know how much fun kids have with magnets.

Preschool-age children love to fish. You can create a fishing board game with small toy fishing poles and hearts (as fish). Use an empty plastic tub as your “lake” and put into it red hearts cut out of construction paper or cardstock. Each heart is good for a prize. One might be good for a Hershey’s kiss, or other small candy, another might be for a small plastic heart. Put magnets on the cardstock hearts and a magnet on the fishing pole. Then the kids can “fish” for hearts and win a prize at the same time. Each child should only be allowed to “catch” one fish each.

Preschoolers love balloons and you can create a pot of gold target for them to aim their balloons at. Create a target out of cardboard or heavy cardstock and put it on the floor somewhere. You might want to have several targets on the floor. Give the kids balloons that have been blown up but aren’t tied shut. Let them let go of the balloons in the direction of the target and see where their balloon lands. Be forewarned: kids will want to play this over and over again. So either have plenty of balloons ready to go (perhaps held closed with a clothespin) or have plenty of adults around who want to blow up balloon after balloon. You can also play a similar game by putting a pot of gold target into a box or laundry basket and having the children try to hit the target with an inflated balloon. Be sure to provide prizes for everyone!

Preschool age children love a good board game of “Duck Duck Goose” or “Simon Says”. For St Patricks Day, you can put a twist on these classic games. Have the kids play a game of “Leprechaun, Leprechaun, Gold” instead of “Duck, Duck, Goose” or have them play “Leprechaun Says” instead of “Simon Says”.  

This is a game young children love. Have them “throw smiles” at each other. Sit them in a circle and show them how the game will work. Only one person in the group will smile first. He or she will smile wildly and widely for the whole group. The rest of the group will not smile, not even a little tiny smirk. Once the smiling person is done, they will literally “wipe” the smile off their face and pass it to the next person in the group, who will repeat the wide smile and hope nobody laughs. The kids that laugh or smile are out of the game (those who should be stone-faced anyway). The game can continue until only one stone-faced person is left. Be sure to provide every child with a fun prize just for trying.

Preschool teachers might want to encourage creative thinking with a little game of “St Patricks 20 questions”. The teacher can have a visual in mind, which might be a Clover, or Leprechaun, or a card or something relative to the holiday. The teacher says “I’m thinking…:” and the children must ask questions about what the teacher is thinking. The teacher can give tiny clues along the way especially if he or she is losing the interest of the younger children in the group. Whoever figures out what the teacher is thinking can be the next one to begin the next round of 20 questions. Be sure to ask the child what they are thinking before the next round begins or it could go on longer than it needs to!

Children love “pin the tale on the donkey” so why not “pin the gold on the leprechaun”? In this game, simply provide each child with a big piece of gold with his or her name on it. Have a big cutout of the Leprechaun on a wall and blindfold each child, spin him or her around and have them stick their gold on the leprechaun (there should be adhesive of some sort on the back of the gold). Once everyone has stuck their gold, let them look at where they ended up.

The happy days, when we all used to play board games in a group are diminishing. In those days, families used to have more than a single child and it was a joy to play board games such as monopoly, candyland, operation and others. The joy was in the board games as well as the group interaction. Today with many families opting for a single child, its tough to find board games that can be played with alone. A child needs to play board games. a child enjoys the imagery of games such as monopoly . The imagination works wonders for a young mind.

Imagine parents worrying about their child- who will play with our child? Will he/she never play group board games that we enjoyed so much in our childhood? Will, my kid never know the joy of playing board games? Please stop worrying about that because one manufacturer has solved this problem.

The Magical Rainbow kids board game by Crossen Creations was designed so that it could be played with a group or alone.  The beauty of the board game is that when your child has no one to play the game with they can use the magnetic play pieces and colorful game board as their very own imaginary play land.  As I said earlier, imagination works wonders for a young mind, and what a great way to get more out of a board game.  If your child has someone to play the board game with great, if not then your childs imagination can be put to good use.

Magical Rainbow kids board game has won top industry awards, including Creative Child’s Board Game of the year and Dr Toy Best Picks.  Children love playing it, and parents too! So get your copy now before they are sold out this Christmas.  The board game can be purchased at amazon.com or directly from magicalrainbow.com