Collection: Team Building

While many games encourage friendly competition, cooperative board games help kids work together towards a shared goal. Games that require teamwork foster healthy group dynamics and help kids build skills like empathy and thoughtfulness.

Save the Pie: In this flagship cooperative board game from SimplyFun, kids work as a team to keep Beary Bear from eating all the berries along the trail. Players try to stay ahead of Beary, collecting berries for the Pie Maker.

• Who it's for: Kids who like to coordinate strategies
• Players: 2-6 (ages 6+)
• Skills it builds: Communication, observation, interpretation

Team Digger: This game won a Good Housekeeping Best Toy Award for its balance of fun, skill-building, and challenge. Players assume the role of pups as they collaborate on five-card sequences to move to dig sites. The goal is to dig up four bones before digging up unwanted objects.

• Who it's for: Kids who enjoy math & STEM games
• Players: 2-6 (ages 6+)
• Skills it builds: Sequencing, coding, critical thinking

Pairamid: This fun game — which earned a Preferred Choice Award from Creative Child Magazine — combines cooperative and competitive gameplay. Players collaborate with teammates and opponents to look for hidden scarabs as researchers in Egypt, weighing risks when making each move.

• Who it's for: Kids who enjoy strategy games
• Players: 3-4 (ages 8+)
• Skills it builds: Collaboration, problem-solving, planning, strategic thinking

SimplyFun competitive board games like the ones below can be played individually or in teams.

Sticks & Stunts: This fun board game challenges players to build towers and structures with brightly colored sticks. Depending on the playing card, players must either look at and memorize instructions about what to build with their sticks, or listen to a player’s description of what to build. Players also must answer trivia questions to earn tokens, and the first team with four tokens in a row on their bingo board wins!

• Who it's for: Kids who love hands-on creative activities
• Players: 2-6 (ages 8+)
• Skills it builds: Communication, fine motor skills, actively listening

Triage: This Mom’s Choice Awards-winning game challenges teams to mobilize cars, helicopters, and buses to save citizens from disaster! The catch is that some vehicles hold more people, but move fewer spaces, so players need to plan ahead and think strategically about how to move citizens to safety. While this game starts competitively, kids usually end up working cooperatively to ensure no one is left behind.

• Who it's for: Kids who like fast-paced games
• Players: 2-5 (ages 12+)
• Skills it builds: Decision-making skills, spatial reasoning, situational analysis

For families with aspiring entertainers or kids who love physical play, SimplyFun offers games that get players moving and spark creativity!

Dance Like a Lemur: Moooo-ve the furniture out of the way for this one, because you’ll need some space! In this game, players do their best impressions of animals, using sounds, movements, language, and storytelling, in between lemur dance parties. This entire game lasts just 15 minutes, so it’s a great choice when you’re short on time.

• Who it's for: Younger kids and animal-lovers
• Players: 2-5 (ages 4+)
• Skills it builds: Recall, creative thinking, motor skills

Kahootz!: Wondering what board games are good for big groups? Kahootz! is a great game for 6 or more players. Get ready for laughs as team members act out the words on their Action Cards. Words may be sounds, emotions, nouns, actions, or tongue-twisters — kids may also have to draw an image depicting the word.

• Who it's for: Larger groups
• Players: 6+ (ages 8+)
• Skills it builds: Creativity, observation skills, memory