[mpettitt]

I have a 5yo and play a wide range of games with her. She has various "learning games" from Orchard Toys. She has some junior versions of various mainstream games (e.g. Scrabble, Dobble) and junior versions of more gamer type games (e.g. Ticket to Ride: First Journey, Catan Junior, Concept Kids). She's got some (ok, a lot) of Pokémon cards, including the Battle Academy sets which give 3 roughly balanced decks for about £20, which give a decent introduction to the game. She can also play various other gamer type games - Zooloreto, full size Ticket to Ride, Thunderbirds co-op game, Kingdomino, etc.

Also have a 3yo who is awesome at Dragonimo and likes joining in with things like Uno.

I'm pretty sure the key thing is to teach kids that games are supposed to be fun and that there are a lot of options. There are games on my shelves which I don't plan to introduce them to for a while yet, but mostly because they are a bit too dry (hard to get kids interested in some themes) or require a bit too much in the way of reading without your opponent helping, but I'm sure they'll get introduced eventually!

[contingencies]

Check out Sleeping Queens, which looks like it's all chance but is really excellent for sneaking in some simple integer maths practice. Virus! is also a great card game for younger kids. When you get there, outsourcing (adult) scrabble scoring to your kid is also a sneaky way to get some extra maths in.