4 Must-Have Cooperative Games for Homeschool Families

While a little healthy competition on family game night is fun, cooperative games present an opportunity to teach your kids a variety of important life skills. The games require players to work together toward a common goal, and in the end, everyone wins or loses together. Ultimately, the games provide children with opportunities to practice patience, compromise, teamwork, and communication skills. Check out these four cooperative games you should add to your collection.

Snug as a Bug in a Rug (Ages 3-6)
This game is a great way to introduce your youngest children to board games! As players work together to hide matching bugs under the rug before stink bugs smell up the place, they simultaneously learn colors, numbers, shapes, and counting.

Hoot Owl Hoot! (Ages 4+)
Just like Snug as a Bug in a Rug, this game incorporates additional educational elements, including color matching and simple strategy. The object of the game is to collectively help the owls return to their nest before the sun rises.

Hanabi (Ages 8+)
In Hanabi, players view all hands except their own and collaborate to launch a brilliant firework display. That goal is accomplished by providing other players with key information about their own hands and using that information to play cards in proper launch order before running out of launch tokens.

Pandemic (Ages 10+)
With the fate of humanity in their hands, players take on different character roles and work together to exchange information, travel the globe, and slow the spread of four deadly diseases. One of the most popular cooperative games in circulation, Pandemic is most fun to play with players who have the same amount of exposure to the game as you do.