Back in December, several people got Covid at my boys’ school, and so everyone ended up with a 4-week-long holiday break over December and January. And so, with our boys home for a month solid, we spent a lot of time playing games over the holidays. We are a gaming family anyway, but we definitely got into some new ones.

Here are some of our favorites right now:

• Root: This is the top game at our house right now (thanks, Mike!). It feels like Settlers of Catan meets Risk. This is definitely more advanced and in-depth — thus my younger two boys (5 and 8) struggle and I usually have to help them with their turns, but they love the gameplay anyway. My 10 yo is great at it and quickly picked up the mechanics and strategy.

• Skyjoe: Perfect for casual game night with anyone at just about any age.

• Bang: This has been our family favorite for a several years now. There are several expansion packs as well, and about once every six months we will get a new expansion.

• Bananagrams: We will often sneak in a round of Bananagrams before bedtime, or during lunch.

• Crew: If you like card games such as hearts, spades, etc. Then you’ll enjoy this.

• (Bonus) Dominion: This is a deck-building card game that my family got into back before we all started having kids. We got so many of the expansion decks that I had to build my own custom card box. Anyway… we haven’t played it in ages, but listing out all these other games reminded me how much fun Dominion is.