7 Reasons We Love To Play Yahtzee

7 Reasons We Love To Play Yahtzee

Do you play board games with your kids? We do. And Yahtzee is a family-favourite. Keep reading to find out why.

You know one of the things I remember from my own childhood? Playing games together as a family.

And, no, these are the falling-out-over-Monopoly type of memories.

They’re the happy, feeling connected type of memories. We played games together as a family from as young as I can remember.

Rainy evenings playing Cluedo, or Monopoly. As my sister and me got older, we played the Atmosfear games. And I remember a Sherlock Holmes board game that we played a lot.

We actually still have lots of the games from my childhood and teenager years.

But one of the games that I didn’t play as a child is Yahtzee.

I think I was in my twenties before I was introduced to this particular game.

What Is Yahtzee?

Okay, so you might not have heard of Yahtzee. And it’s sometimes spelled differently. You may see it written as Yahtzee, Yatzie, or Yatzy.

However you see it written, the game is the same.

Yahtzee is essentially a dice game. It’s a game of luck, probability and strategy.

You have five dice, and thirteen turns to try and make the highest score using thirteen different scoring methods. Each of the thirteen scoring methods can only be used once.

I’m not going to cover all the rules – or give an in-depth description of the game here – that’s not what this blog is about.

But, the important point is that once you’ve made a decision about how you’re counting up the score of your dice on one of your turns, you cannot change it later.

You gotta stick with your choices, no matter how the dice fall.

That might mean that you end up with a score of zero for throwing five sixes!

Who Can Play?

Yahtzee is one of those games that just about everyone can play and enjoy.

It is recommended for age 8+, but we started playing this with GinGin when she was only five or six.

You might like to try playing a simplified version of Yahtzee with children younger than eight. And you could invite your kids to make up some of their own rules for the game to get them really involved in playing.

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7 Reasons to Play Yahtzee With Your Kids

1. Spend Quality Time Together

Okay se we’re busy mamas and we’ve got lots of things to do. But our kids need us to pay them attention by focusing on nothing but them for a bit everyday. Playing a game like Yahtzee with your child shows them that you’re interested in things they like to do.

2. Sharing a Fun Activity

Playing games with our children is fun. Daily chores, work and homework can get in the way of enjoying time with our kids. And I’m sure I’m not the only mum to feel like a fun-sponge most days. It doesn’t take much to put aside half-an-hour to do something fun – like play Yahtzee – together.

3. Building Maths Skills

This is one of the main reasons I started playing Yahtzee with GinGin when she was just five or six. She’d always been brilliant with numbers and numeracy, but she was starting to lose confidence in Maths at school. So, when she asked to play a game one day, I suggested Yahtzee. She loved playing. She didn’t realise that by playing she was practising some of the maths skills she was learning at school.

4. Develop Skills in Logic and Problem Solving

Yahtzee is a game of chance, luck and strategy. Whilst you can’t predict how the dice are going to land, you can increase your chances of getting a good score by using game tactics and developing a strategy. These are really useful life skills to have.

5. Building Up Resilience

Remember when I said that once you’ve decided how you’re going to score a turn you can’t change your mind later? Well that definitely means you learn to live with the decisions you’ve made. And in a harmless way. Okay so there may be a bit of sulking if your baby throws a Yahtzee but they’ve already crossed it out, but life doesn’t always go our way and we have to learn to deal with it.

6. Decision Making

Have you ever been in the toy / sweet / book shop with your kid when they’ve got pocket money to spend? And did they take what felt like a decade deciding what to buy? Yep me too! GinGin struggles to make decisions – even on things that might seem trivial to me – because she’s worried she’ll make the wrong choice. Yahtzee is full of decisions to make, and they have to be made quickly. The consequences of a wrong decision are minimal so it’s a great way to teach our kids how to make choices and live with them.

7. Entertainment Without a Screen

We all know that too much screen-time is not good for us, or our kids. And yet our kids LOVE watching TV and playing on electronic devices. Let’s be honest we do too – there’s a reason Netflix and Instagram are so popular! Playing a game gets everyone together, having fun, chatting and connecting with one another. Bonding through play as a family gives our kids a beautiful gift: happy childhood memories.

Where Can I Buy Yahtzee?

These are affiliate links and so as an Amazon Associate I might earn from qualifying purchases. There is absolutely no additional cost to you. 

So there you have my seven reasons why we love to play Yahtzee.

If you’d like to play it with your own kids – or even with your hubby when the kids have gone to bed! – then you can buy it from Amazon here.

You can also buy a gaming board to roll the dice into if you like, but it’s not necessary. It might just stop you losing the dice!

And you can also buy extra score sheets if you need them.

What games do you love to play with your kids? Let me know in the comments below because we’d love to try out some new ones!

What Next?

If you like this post then you might enjoy these to:

• Head Lice: How to Get Rid of Them for Good
• My Epic Parenting Fail And How I Overcame It
• Education: Kids It’s Okay to Make Mistakes!
• Help! My Toddler Hates Having a Bath

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Jennie (GinGin & Roo)

Hi, I’m Jennie and I’m the blogger and content creator behind the award-winning blog GinGin & Roo, a UK parenting and lifestyle blog.

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