Another game that we've really gotten into lately is Blokus. We first noticed the game from all the awards that it had accumulated (Mensa Select, Parent's Choice Gold Award, and 20 others).

The rules are simple so even our younger children can play. Our 4 year old can follow the rules for putting down pieces and even though he doesn't have much strategy he is effective at messing with the strategy of the other players. Even with the simple rules the game is very challenging and gets your brain working.

All four players have 21 tetris like colored tiles to play on the 400 square board. The pieces come in 5 different sizes, covering from 1 to 5 squares. The first piece you place must touch your assigned corner of the board. Every subsequent piece you play must touch a corner (and not a side) of one of your previously played pieces. Your pieces can touch other players pieces in any way. That's it. The player with the least number of squares in his unplayed pieces wins the game. Bonus points are given for using all your pieces and for using your 1 square piece last.

Every time we sit down to play this game we end up playing it half a dozen times. It's addicting and it works my brain trying to block off sections of the board so that I have room to play my remaining pieces without giving the other players access.

I've also noticed that it really helps the younger children learn some spacial relationships by having to rotate and flip their pieces to fit them into open spaces on the board. At first they had trouble seeing that a large piece could not fit into some of the smaller openings, but after a while they were able to visually figure that out without having to actually try to fit the piece in the space.

I totally recommend this game.