Grandparent Grandchild Activities: The Game That Bonds

The best grandparent grandchild activities are not trips or outings. They are small things done over and over, and a standing game is the best of them. A grandchild who plays cribbage with a grandfather every Sunday for six years ends up with something no zoo visit provides: a relationship with its own language, its own jokes, and a reason to sit together that does not depend on anyone having something to say.

This article is about why that bond forms so well across a board, which games work at each age, and how to make the game a habit rather than an occasion.

Why does a game build the bond better than an outing?

Because a bond is made of repetition and shared attention, and a game delivers both without effort.

Repetition. Friendship researchers broadly agree that close ties need regular contact to stay close and decay surprisingly fast without it. The same applies across generations. A once-a-year trip is a memory. A weekly game is a relationship.

Something to do. A seven-year-old and a seventy-year-old do not have much to talk about on purpose. Put a game of Sorry! between them and they have an hour of talk by accident. The game carries the conversation across the gap in age, and the gap stops mattering.

Equal footing. Most of a grandchild’s time with adults is spent being managed. At a game table, the grandparent is an opponent, and a beatable one. Children notice this. It is one of the few places where they are a peer.

A role for the grandparent. Grandparents often describe feeling useful at the table in a way they do not elsewhere. They are the one who knows the rules of euchre, the one who taught the kid to count a cribbage hand. That matters for the grandparent at least as much as for the child.

Transmission. A game is a thing you can hand down. A grandchild who learns pinochle from a grandmother carries her into every future game of pinochle. Very few other activities do that.

Which games work at each age?

The game has to fit the younger player, and it has to be one the older player can still enjoy after the fortieth time. Here is a rough ladder.

Two notes on the ladder.

Cribbage deserves special mention. It teaches arithmetic to a nine-year-old without anyone calling it math, it stays interesting for a lifetime, and the board itself becomes an heirloom. Many families have one that has crossed three generations.

Euchre, in the Midwest, is the game that teenagers suddenly want to learn around sixteen, because it is what the adults play after dinner. A grandparent who teaches it has given the teen a seat at the adult table. That is a gift they understand.

For a longer list for the younger years, games to play with grandparents is written from the child’s side.

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How do you make the game a habit instead of an event?

The difference is almost entirely scheduling.

1. Pick a slot that recurs on its own. Sunday after lunch. Every visit, first thing. The Friday the grandparent picks the kids up. Attach the game to something that already happens.
2. Keep one game for a long time. Children like mastery. Play the same game until the child can beat you, then play it some more. Novelty is for the grandparent’s game group, not this one.
3. Keep a scorebook. A notebook with every game’s score going back years is one of the most treasured objects a family can own. Start it on day one.
4. Let distance be a reason, not an excuse. Grandparents who live far away can play Ticket to Ride, chess, or Uno through apps with a video call open, or play Battleship by text. It is not the same as the table, but it keeps the thread until the next visit. Keeping a game group alive when everyone moved away has more on remote play that still feels like play.
5. Do not let it become a lesson. The temptation to teach, correct, and coach is strong. Resist most of it. The child is learning plenty by watching.
6. Lose sometimes, and win sometimes. Children can tell when they are being let win, and they can tell when they are being crushed. Play at about their level, and let the level rise.

What does the grandparent get out of it?

More than the child, in some ways, and the research backs that up.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, running since 1938, found that the quality of people’s close relationships in midlife predicted their health at 80 better than their cholesterol did, and its directors describe those relationships as something that has to be actively tended rather than assumed. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory associated chronic loneliness or isolation with roughly 50 percent higher dementia risk in older adults and more than double the odds of depression. And the Lothian Birth Cohort in Scotland found that people who played more non-digital games in their 70s scored better on memory and thinking tests, and that those who played more over the decade showed less decline; the researchers described the association as small.

A standing game with a grandchild is relationship tending, social contact, and mental engagement in one sitting, and it is the kind of commitment a grandparent will keep when they would skip almost anything else. If a grandparent’s memory or mood seems to be changing, talk with their doctor. The game helps alongside care; it does not stand in for it.

There is also something the studies do not measure. A grandparent at a game table is not old. They are the person who just took the last blue train route out from under you. Grandchildren remember that version, and they carry it.

What if the grandparent and grandchild are very different?

They usually are. A quiet grandmother and a loud nine-year-old, or a competitive grandfather and a child who hates losing. The game handles most of it.

Cooperative games such as Forbidden Island or The Crew put both players on the same side, which helps with a child who cannot yet lose gracefully. Games with hidden information, like Codenames or euchre, give the quiet player a role that does not require talking much. Dexterity games and tile games suit a grandparent whose hands or eyes are changing, because there is little to read.

And if the first game does not take, try a second. The point was never the game.

The game is the reason. The people are the point. Across sixty years of age difference, a deck of cards is still the shortest bridge we know.

FAQ

What are good grandparent grandchild activities?

Repeated activities beat one-time outings: a standing weekly game, a shared hobby, cooking the same recipe. A game works especially well because it gives both people something to do and an equal footing.

What games can grandparents play with young grandchildren?

For ages 3 to 5, cooperative games like First Orchard, Go Fish with picture cards, and memory matching. For 6 to 8, Uno, Sorry!, dominoes, Rummikub, and Sleeping Queens.

How can grandparents bond with grandchildren who live far away?

Play the same game by app with a video call open, keep a shared scorebook across visits, and make the game the first thing you do when you are together. Consistency matters more than the medium.

Are games good for grandparents’ health?

Research associates regular social contact and non-digital game play with better mood and memory in later life. A standing game with a grandchild provides both, though the studies are observational and do not prove cause.

One game a week, for a lifetime

The Ludarium is building a game lounge in Indianapolis where a grandparent and a grandchild can find a table any afternoon. If you want new ideas for keeping the generations at the same table, subscribe to the Ludarium newsletter. New pieces on play and longevity go to subscribers first.