Candyland

I always enjoy using board games when working with kids. Games are a familiar medium and improve a variety of skills, but they’re also fun. And if the kids are having fun, the better they’ll take to their new skills.

Because April is Occupational Therapy Month and board games are a frequent go-to for pediatric OTs, they’ve become our awesome #OTMonth blog theme. First up, CANDYLAND!

Name of Game: Candyland
Debut: 1949
Age Range: 3-6 years
Objective: Be the first player to reach King Kandy’s Castle

Let’s face it. Board games are tricky for little ones because most of them require planning, strategy, and the capacity to understand and recall the rules of gameplay. Candyland is one of the first few tabletop games that little kids can actually play. Why? Because there is absolutely no strategy whatsoever. Its simplicity is intentional, originally designed for young children recovering from polio.

While recuperating from polio in a San Diego hospital, a retired schoolteacher named Eleanor Abbott developed the board game to entertain the kids stricken with the disease in 1948. Back then, polio patients, mostly children, were confined by equipment and restrictive environments. Thus, the fanciful premise and easy-to-understand gameplay served as a much needed mental escape. Its popularity within the ward allowed Abbott to submit it to Milton Bradley, who decided to publish it in 1949.

What makes the game so simple?

Visually-based gameplay relying on bright colors and pictures rather than complex rules to determine what happens in the game.
No reading required
One linear track eliminating the need to strategize or make complex decisions.
A straightforward objective. The first one to the castle wins. More recent editions have a multicolored rainbow space at the end of the game to ensure a clear winner.

Gameplay

Each player chooses a playing piece and places it on the start space.
Shuffle the cards and place them face down in a pile.
Youngest player goes first.

Players take turns drawing a card. Each card has a color or a picture which determines where their game piece will move to on the board.

One color – player moves their piece to the next space of the card’s corresponding color
Two colors – player advances their piece two times, landing on the second space that matches the color on the card
Picture – player moves their piece to corresponding picture icon on the game board

Lessons Learned

While Candyland is pretty easy for your preschooler to grasp, it provides many opportunities to practice skills, like:

Social skills (taking turns)
Following directions and rules
Visual discrimination (matching)
Color recognition
Counting
Self-control
Emotional regulation (how to handle a win or loss)

Modifications

As a pediatric OT, Candyland is one of my favorite games to play with little kids. It’s usually their first time engaging with others in this format and it’s wonderful to see their faces light up when they get to the castle and win. So, imagine my surprise when I found out how many parents dislike this game. I mean, there are articles and forums about it with reasons ranging from how boring it is to their child’s emotional outbursts if they lose.

Despite all that, what’s cool about Candyland is that it can be the open-ended toy in the world of board games. It’s so simple that you can add your own spin to make it meaningful/challenging/age and ability appropriate.

Here are some ways to change it up:

To avoid meltdowns, make a rule where a picture card only sends a player forward (not backwards). You can also create and add more picture cards to the deck for the added difficulty.
If your child needs some help with colors, just use the cards and play a game of I-Spy or do a scavenger hunt regarding colors. So if they pull a card with the color blue, they need to find/locate an object that is blue.
Instead of drawing one card, have each player draw two cards on their turn. Each player will choose which of these cards they want to use.
If a player is unhappy with the card they drew, they can discard it and pull another card which they must play.
At the start of the game, each player receives five cards to play instead of drawing from the pile. They draw a new card at the end of each turn.
Use dice instead of the color cards. Create rules for doubles or different roll combinations, like five jumping jacks for rolling a five.
Add more strategy to the game by including hops and bumps. A hop is if a player lands on an occupied space, they jump to the next vacant spot of that color. A bump is if a player lands on an inhabited spot, they can send the player back to the nearest candy (or back to start if you want to be ruthless).
Make Candyland a treat by incorporating treats. So if they land in the Licorice Lagoon, have them try some licorice. You can also use the game to introduce new foods to their palate. If they pull purple card, have them try a healthy food of that color (grape, plum, eggplant, etc).
Play up your child’s imagination and add a monster/villain to the board game. Give them a backstory as to why they’re trying to capture all the players, stopping them from reaching King Kandy’s Castle. The monster has a turn to draw a card and move through the gameboard. If the monster overtakes a player, that player is out. See Mario Party for other villain ideas.