Best educational board games for families

In 2025, the traditional board game still reigns supreme; Scrabble, Articulate! and Guess Who? are all standards in many households. But there are many innovative, colourful, all-singing, all-dancing games offering fun and educational experiences to family members of all ages.

Why should I play board games with my family?

Board games encourage strategic thinking in a way that other activities do not. Players first need to understand a set of rules, and then be able to follow them. Children are given the opportunity to learn how to take turns, and experience the elation of a win – as well as how to cope with a loss. The student can then become the master and deliver ‘the teach’ by explaining to others how the game works, clarifying objectives and offering demonstrations.

But most importantly, games are fun! Below is a selection of games that have been tried and tested in our household.

Junior versions of well-known board games

Let’s start with a few versions of well-known board games, which are appropriate for a younger audience and make a good introduction into the world of board games. Ticket to Ride: First Journey Europe is a perfect game for beginners, whereby they place their cute little train carriages on the board to build train lines.

My First Carcassonne is a simpler version of the original game, whereby players need to place their ‘meeple’ (my people) on brightly coloured tiles featuring roads and houses. Children can collect gold and build pirate hideouts in Catan: Junior, or work on their literacy and spelling in Scrabble Junior.

Collaborative educational games

Teamwork makes the dream work, and sometimes working together is a necessity to achieve a win. From the creators of cooperative hit, Pandemic, comes Space Escape: Molerats in Space. It features snakes and ladders, but is so much more fun than that old classic (which, let’s face it, is based on nothing but luck). Each player is in control of an astronaut figure who has to move around the board collecting resources in their adorable little backpacks. Most importantly, you have to work together to avoid getting bitten by snakes and failing in your mission.

Zombie Kidz Evolution is a collaborative game whereby you adopt the identity of a school kid and have to work together to block up classrooms and hallways in order to avoid getting zombified. The more times you play, the game invites you to open additional envelopes, which introduce new characters and game mechanics.

Games for homeschooling

Orchard Toys have a huge selection of games including matching and memory games, language and literacy, numbers and counting, shapes and colours - they even have a new Bluey range.

For literacy and spelling practice, games such as Boggle and Upwords are a good place to start. Bananagrams is fun as you shout out ‘top banana’ or ‘rotten banana’ at your opponents, and Pairs in Pears is appropriate for younger children, who have already got to grips with three-letter words.

Storycubes encourages creative thinking as players roll a dice to combine characters, animals and objects to come up with an original storyline.

For maths and logic, we have had lots of fun with Genius Square and Gagne Ton Papa which encourage spatial awareness. Blokus is a bit trickier and is best with four players; and of course, Connect 4, Mastermind and Battle Ships are good old classics which involve critical thinking and logic. All of these include a competitive element, but for a solo challenge, you could try Kanoodle or Smarts IQ Puzzler Pro where players have to try to fit coloured Tetris-like pieces into a flat grid or pyramid shape.

Card games

Card games are usually fairly compact, so they can be great for travelling or even whipping out in a restaurant, to entertain younger diners as they wait for their food. Some of our favourites include number games UNO and ONO 99, which probably require little explanation.

A fairly recent discovery for us is GUBS, which is a magical little game about bugs, moths, toads, leaf boats and gemstones. This has taught our youngest the valuable lesson that your fortunes can change in an instant, as one card flushes all the bugs away in a flood, yet another can lure other players’ bugs over to your hand in one fell swoop!

Another hit in our household is Dobble, which is great for kids of all ages because there are no words, just pictures. Based on some complex mathematical formula (n² + n + 1?!) it’s a sort of elaborate game of snap - but is challenging enough to get the whole family in the competitive spirit!

Silly games 

These games encourage movement or actions, sometimes getting people up and out of their chairs. They are often very visual, featuring few words or instructions.

Happy Salmon involves lots of shouting and running around tables and is perfect for younger children. Card game Exploding Kittens is a lot of fun. You can buy expansion packs and it also exists in a ‘Minions’ version. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza is on our list of games to try – it has won loads of awards and is available in lots of different languages. Throw Throw Burrito also looks pretty fun!

Board game communities in Luxembourg

This is a relatively small snapshot of the many educational board games available, and there are many websites and online forums offering up further suggestions of games to try. The Ludothèque in Differdange rents out board games, giving families the chance to have a go and find their favourite games before buying a game outright. They also host a couple of days every year where they open up their entire library of games to the public – you can follow them on Facebook or Instagram.

Meeple Monastery in Echternach is your go-to for buying all kinds of games, from the usual board games and party games, to trading cards and strategy games. They host events such as games evenings, tournaments and quiz nights, and will soon create a café corner in their shop.

The Board Games Fanatics of Luxembourg (BGFL) hold events including a regular Friday night meet-up for older players. Find more info on their Facebook and Instagram pages.