A Mighty Girl 2023 Holiday Guide

Experience life as a monarch butterfly in this game from Spiel des Jahre winner Elizabeth Hargrave and Alderac Entertainment Group! Mariposas is played across three seasons: in spring, your butterflies head North; in summer, they spread out; and in fall, they return south. Along the way, you're trying to collect flower tokens and breed future generations by landing near milkweed plants! Keep an eye on your objectives to score extra points, and win even more points for every butterfly that makes it back to Mexico at the end of the fall. With stunning artwork, simple but deep gameplay, and different strategies to try every time you play, this game for 2 to 5 players is sure to be a favorite.

Elephants, dogs, lions and more! Collect as many colorful animal "gemstones" as you can in this game of Mancala for Kids. Split the gemstones between the cups on the hinged playing board, then take turns choosing a cup and moving around the board, dropping one animal in each spot as you go. Your goal is to have as many animals in your mancala, the large cup at the end of the board, as possible. Quick to learn but with surprisingly challenging strategy, this will quickly become a family favorite!

Hive from Gen42 Games is a board game with a difference: there is no board! Two players build the board by laying their insect tiles down; each insect has its own rules about how it can move. Your goal is to surround your opponent's Queen Bee and capture her! Easy to learn and complex to master, you can even build on this game with expansion packs that add new insects like ladybugs, pillbugs, or mosquitos, each with their own special abilities. And for a travel edition, check out Hive Pocket for strategic fun on the go.

It's time to get tracking! With this game from Laurence King Publishing, kids have to match the animal track to its owner. With 25 tracks to match — including a wide variety of animals, from elephants to coyotes to peacocks — kids will have to use their reasoning skills to figure out what kind of animal could create that shape. If you match more pairs than your opponent, you win! Kids will love the colorful animal illustrations in this easy-to-play game.

This matching game from eeBoo is a wonderful way to develop an appreciation of diversity around the world while enhancing memory skills. The smiling faces of 24 children from countries all over the world are fun — and sometimes challenging — to match in this memory game. The back cover shows each child and identifies their home country, to inspire kids to learn more about the varied cultures and nations of our planet.

Rory's Story Cubes is a pocket-sized creative story generator, providing hours of imaginative play for all ages! Roll the cubes and create a story from the images that show up. Intriguing, open-ended images like a footprint, a keyhole, a castle, and more will get your creative juices flowing. Kids can use these cubes on their own as a story generator or creative writing prompt, or groups can use it as a party game or ice breaker as each person add to a larger story. It's a playful way to develop literacy skills, imagination, and more!

Cooperate or perish in this dungeon-themed game with a five-minute time limit! Each player takes the role of an intrepid hero, one of a party working their way through a dungeon. Dangerous monsters, perilous obstacles, and terrifying Dungeon Bosses stand between you and your goal. With no turns, the gameplay is fast and furious! Five different dungeons and a randomly selected mix of obstacles mean endless replayability for this clever game.

Get ready for a game of shuffleboard or curling on your tabletop with this reversible game board from GoSports! This 45 by 13 inch board is perfect for game night, barbecues, and more. It's quick and easy to flip from one game to the other, and the set comes with eight "rollers" with steel ball bearings that mimic the way curling rocks and shuffleboard weights glide. With its solid wood surface, it's durable and easy to play. You can even get an extra set of rollers that comes with four in each color.

Help Shelby the dog find all her missing bones! Your kids will practice fine motor control and counting skills as they use the Shelby squeezers to pick up bones to drop in their bowls. And be careful — you could spin a seagull and lose some bones, or even get distracted chewing on a shoe! This fun game will have kids laughing while also learning math and social skills. For more math fun, there's also a Shelby's Snack Shack counting board book for ages 1 to 4.

Help the dinosaurs escape the volcano with this cooperative game from Peaceable Kingdom! Roll the die and move the dinosaur movers, looking for matching dinosaurs hiding under the fern tokens — and watch out for the T. Rex. If you help all three dinosaurs make it safely off the island before you assemble the 3D puzzle volcano, you win! This game of cooperation and memory is the perfect choice for dinosaur fans.

Enjoy this squishy, squashy sculpting party game from Educational Insights! In this fast-paced family game, teams race against the clock to guess what one of their teammates is sculpting with the included non-drying Playfoam. You might have to sculpt with your eyes closed, create an accessory you put on your face, or craft a prop to help people guess your word! Perfect for family game night, this innovative game is sure to prompt hilarious antics and creative molding to get your team to win!

Who will make the tower tip? This classic Jenga game from Hasbro will have the whole family on the edge of their seats! Create a tower from the 54 hardwood blocks, then take turns pulling blocks out of the tower and putting them on the top. The higher the tower gets, the more blocks get pulled, and sooner or later everything will come crashing down... This version of the classic game comes with a stacking sleeve so you can easily set it up and get in the game!

Explore the solar system with this unique round puzzle from Hape that even includes a light-up LED sun! This 102-piece puzzle lets you create a round depiction of the solar system, including a rocket ship with astronaut and eight planets. Then, clip the planet pieces into the right places so they can orbit where they belong! Kids will love imagining themselves on an outer space adventure as they build this puzzle, and looking for every detail on the double-sided educational poster that comes with it.

Little board gamers will love this adaptation of the best-selling game Ticket To Ride that's just right for them! Just like in the original Ticket To Ride, kids will collect train cards to claim routes and connect cities across the United States, but in this version, routes are shorter and train cards are drawn straight from the deck. The game ends when one player completes six tickets, giving this fast-paced game a 30 minute play time! Fans of Ticket To Ride: Europe can also get the Ticket To Ride: Europe - First Journey game.

Learn to fold — no previous experience required — with Foldology! This series of 100 paper puzzles is based on origami folding techniques. To play, tear a sheet out of your booklet and examine it. Your goal is to get the picture in a square on one side. To do so, you'll fold, flip, and experiment. Each puzzle builds on the last, teaching you new folding skills and building your dexterity while you challenge your brain. Kids and adults alike will love this unique puzzle game.

The Dragonwood is a dangerous, ever-changing place... but great rewards are to be found for those daring enough to enter! Collect adventurer cards to give you an edge when you face a foe in the Dragonwood. Choose cautiously: use up too many dice on lesser creatures and you'll be defenseless when you meet the dragon! Since each game plays out different, you can adventure through Dragonwood over and over — but when you're ready for a more complex challenge, check out the companion game Dragonrealm for ages 10 and up..

Explore the geography, culture, and history of the world with this game from Osmo! In the Detective Agency, you'll use a magnifying glass gamepiece to find clues and landmarks in a variety of different world locations on four double-sided maps. As kids advance, they can unlock new difficulty levels that keep them learning! Please Note: this expansion requires the Osmo Base for your tablet, which is available in several packs, including the Osmo Genius Kit for iPads and the Osmo Genius Kit for Fire tablets.

Blast off into the solar system with this 100-piece puzzle from Eurographics! This 100-piece space puzzle is designed for beginning puzzlers, with large-format, durable pieces that make it easy to assemble but still provide a challenge. Kids will love learning more about our solar system with the vibrant illustrations! This puzzle measures 19 by 13 inches. Plus, parents will love that the 0.07" blueboard is sturdy enough for repeat use without fraying, and that it's made with Forest Stewardship Council certified cardboard and printed with non-toxic, vegetable-based inks so it's 100% recyclable. For an option for younger puzzlers, check out the Solar System Floor Puzzle for ages 3 to 6.

Challenge your dexterity and your brain with this tabletop magnetic party game! Klask is like a fast-paced game of air hockey where you use a magnetic handle to move your striker around the board. Knock the ball into your opponent's goal to score — or, set a trap for your opponent with the loose white magnets for additional points. Solid wood and precision magnets make this a beautiful and durable game set that you'll enjoy for years.

Take a deep dive under the sea and put your knowledge of underwater life to the test with the Ocean Animals Game from The Young Scientists Club! This set includes four games in one, with 80 illustrated game cards that you can use to play bingo, two memory games, and fact-filled trivia fun. Match cards with a full-color image of an ocean creature to a card with three fascinating facts about it. Kids will learn to sort animals by different characteristics, and enjoy spotting all the animals in the included poster!

This card game for 2 to 8 players combines two of your favorite things: destruction and unicorns! In Unstable Unicorns, you work to build an army of seven unicorns before your opponent does. Add unicorns to your army or upgrade your stable — or play strategically and use your cards to block a move or downgrade your opponents. This game's hilarious artwork and fast-paced play made it a tremendous Kickstarter success; now you can try it out yourself.

In this strategic card game from Renegade Game Studios, you're trying to build a beautiful arboretum path by placing cards from your hand. Each color of card features a different species of tree, and you can score points for paths that begin and end with that color — but be careful! You only score points if you also have the highest value of cards of that color in your hand. Elegantly simple rules require surprisingly complex strategy in this gorgeously illustrated game!

Learn your way around all 50 states with this map puzzle from Mudpuppy! This 70-piece double-sided puzzle has state-shaped pieces that feature a graphic on one side, and the state's name and nickname on the back. As kids put the puzzle together, they'll learn about state locations, capitals, landmarks, and more! This 23” x 16.5” puzzle is just the right size for kids, and the colorful illustration encourages them to learn more about American geography. Mudpuppy also makes 70-piece puzzle featuring a Map of Europe.

In this game from Blue Orange, the goal is green energy! Cultivate your trees to take best advantage of the sun... without blocking out the littlest seedlings from the much-needed light. As your trees move through their life cycle, you'll earn points when they catch the light — but since the sun shifts in the sky, the tree that was in a clearing a few turns ago could be in darkness now, so you'll have to think ahead. This game from two to four players is a supreme test of logic skills.

In this game by the creators of Exploding Kittens, what matters isn't how well you act out a clue — it's how intensely you do it! Each player displays an Action Card, which includes prompts like "Scratch an Itch You Can't Reach" or "Be a T-Rex." But each also has a secret intensity card, which gives you an intensity between 1 and 10 with which to perform your action. As everyone dances, roars, wiggles, and more, you have to find another player who's performing the same intensity as you to win points. This fast-paced, laugh-out-loud family party game is sure to be a hit.

Bring the exciting learning potential of Osmo to your child's Fire tablet with this new version of the Osmo genius kit! This unique learning system allows kids to combine tablet time with actual hand-held pieces, letting kids interact with the app through tactile play. The Genius Kit for Fire Tablet includes the Osmo base and apps and game pieces for Tangram, a shapes and placement game; Newton, a problem solving and early physics game; Masterpiece, which teaches creative drawing skills; Numbers, which teaches counting with numbers and dice; and Words, which teaches letters, spelling, and vocabulary. For an alternate version for those with Apple tablets, check out the Osmo Genius Kit for iPads.

Train young brains to think in multiple dimensions, transferring 2D information into 3D reality, with this set from Keva! Players use Keva planks to successfully duplicate the balance, proportion, composition and geometry featured on each card. From picnic tables and bridges to dragonflies and triangles, you will be amazed what your brain will build! Brain Builders Junior features 40 photos of fun, recognizable objects to replicate with the 20 Keva planks.

Your forest friends are hungry and they need your help! In this game from Educational Insights, you spin the spinner, squeeze the matching colored acorn with your Squirrel Squeezers, and place it into your stump. Be the first to fill your stump with delicious acorns and you win! You could also spin "pick an acorn," "steal an acorn," or "lose an acorn," so be strategic, little squirrel! While kids enjoy the fun gameplay, they'll also develop matching skills, strategic thinking, and pre-writing skills.

The most backed board game in Kickstarter history is now available to all with this edition from ThinkFun! In Robot Turtles, kids learn basic coding concepts as they direct their adult "computer" to move a turtle through a maze. It's inspired by the Logo programming language, and includes concepts like debugging and functions. Plus, increasingly challenging obstacles ensure that a wide age range can learn — and have fun! — with this clever game.

A team of adventurers is seeking treasure on the Forbidden Island, but watch out — the island is sinking and you don't have much time! In this cooperative game, players must work together to find and capture four treasures, all while avoiding the obstacles lurking on the island. Once the treasures are in hand, race to Fool's Landing for your helicopter extraction, before the water swallows the island forever... This game is easy to learn and quick to play, perfect for family game night!

Experiment with how shapes make up pictures with this pattern set from Melissa & Doug! Place 30 colorful wooden tiles in place to replicate the 10 fun pictures included with the set, or play with the shapes on your own to see what you can create. Along the way you can talk about colors, shapes, and the names of objects around you. It's a creative and tactile option — part puzzle, part game — that encourages preschoolers to explore patterns and shapes. Plus, parents will love the durable wood construction that ensures she'll get years out of this toy!

This 500-piece puzzle from Mudpuppy is the perfect family project! Parents and kids will enjoy working together to assemble the 20" by 20" puzzle with an exciting outer space theme. Then, turn off the lights to discover a whole different picture that glows in the dark! When you're done, put it back in the storage box until you're ready for more puzzling fun. Parents will appreciate that this puzzle is environmentally conscious, with greyboard that uses 90% recycled paper, packaging that uses 70% recycled paper, and nontoxic inks.

Get your brain working with this traffic jam that you need to untangle! Your goal in this game from ThinkFun is to get the little red car out of the gridlock by maneuvering the cars out of the way. But as more (and bigger) vehicles get involved, that gets tougher and tougher! Forty challenge cards provide puzzles of increasing difficulty for hours of brain-building fun. You can also check out Rush Hour Jr. for a puzzle challenge for kids age 6 to 9.

You can build six bird models out of wooden puzzle pieces — without any tools or glue! — with this set from Hands Craft! The bundle includes a parrot, an eagle, a peacock, a flamingo, an owl, and a swan, each between 6.5 and 8.5 inches long. Punch out the high-quality plywood pieces and slot them together to create these intricate bird models to display! It's a fun way to enjoy some puzzle time while paying tribute to the beauty of birds.

Help Buffy the Vampire Slayer defeat the Big Bad in this semi-cooperative deck-building game from Upper Deck! Each player is working to form a deck of Good Guys so the group can take down the Big Bad (and each wants to contribute the most to the battle!) Will you save up to buy higher-powered cards, or focus on quickly claiming as many attack cards as you can? Keep an eye on the innovative Light/Dark track which can boost — or reduce — the power of your cards! With 500 cards, all featuring images from the TV show, this game for 1 to 5 players will delight Buffy fans!

In this unique strategy game, players take on the role of coral reef, carefully choosing colors and patterns in which to grow and expand — the more beautiful the reef, the more points they will score! On each turn, players select cards that include a top half detailing what coral pieces they can collect and place, and a bottom half with a formation they can build that scores points. As their "reef" grows, players can stack coral up to four high — but you'll have to think ahead, since the coral pieces on the top half of each card never appear on its bottom half. Easy to learn but tricky to master, this game is perfect for repeated family play.

This game form Mad Cave Birds Games is a colorful alternative to Sudoku! Instead of using numbers to solve the puzzles, Colorku uses brightly colored wooden balls: 81 balls in 9 different colors. The wooden game board includes a storage tray to keep all the bits and pieces together, but it also looks great on display. 104 puzzles cards ranging across five levels of difficulty are included, and the color conversion card allows you to transform numeric Sudoku puzzles into new challenges for Colorku, ensuring hours of colorful puzzle solving.

Work together — or challenge one another — to build the tallest, most elephantastic pyramid ever! With every turn, you roll a die to find out how many elephants you have to add to the pyramid, placing them in numerical order. There are a few other fun characters thrown in there, too! This simple game with high-quality wooden pieces will rapidly become a family favorite.

Put the "night" in game night with this cooperative game from ThinkFun that you play in the dark! In Shadows in the Forest, you're trying to keep your Shadowlings out of the light cast by a mini LED lantern. Strategically move your Shadowlings so that they stay in the real shadows on the game board. If all of your Shadowlings can meet in one shadow before they're frozen by the light, you win! This innovative and award-winning board game will challenge kids to think strategically about where the light could fall, and provides a unique option for lights-out play.

Fans of the original Orchard cooperative game will love this modified version that's the perfect "first" game for toddlers! In My First Orchard, one to four players work together to harvest all the colorful fruit before the raven reaches the orchard and eats it all. Roll the die and collect a fruit of the matching color; if you roll the raven, it gets one step closer to the orchard! Large, colorful wooden fruit are perfect for smaller hands and double as a play food set when game time is done.

Introduce the award-winning strategic play of Kingdomino to younger kids with this new junior strategy game from Blue Orange! On your turn, you pick a domino to add to your kingdom. Match it to the dominoes already in play; each matching domino scores you one egg — but the egg could be empty, or it could have a baby dragon inside! Who will find the most baby dragons by the time the game is over? This game for 2 to 4 players is full of draconic strategy fun!

Fans of artist Karen Hallion's inspiring She Series posters can now enjoy this 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle featuring her artwork! This puzzle uses the image from Hallion's Pop Culture Collage Poster which features heroes from TV, movies, books, musicals, and more. This high-quality puzzle features thick, random-cut pieces made from 69-pt chipboard, making it easy to assemble and durable. The vibrant colors of the artwork really pop! With a finished size of 19.25" by 26.625", it's even big enough for a family puzzle project. Fans of Hallion's work will also love this She Series: Real Women puzzle.

Forget Old Maid — why not play Bold Made! This reimagining of the classic Old Maid card game pays tribute to daring women past and present who made the world a better place. The cards feature stunning hand-drawn portraits of women like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Malala Yousafzai, Temple Grandin, Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, and many more. You can play a variant on Go Fish, try classic Old Maid-style rules, or explore their advanced gameplay option for a strategic challenge!