Carcassonne Junior - Children's game (Dutch edition)

Carcassonne Junior is an adaptation of the well-known base game Carcassonne. This simplified version is already suitable for children aged 4+. You get 8 wooden playing pieces, the so-called children of Carcassonne.

You lay land tiles next to each other. When a road is completed, you may place one of your playing pieces on that road if your colour is shown there. If you are the first to place all your playing pieces on the landscape, you have won.

Carcassonne Junior is the winner of the Spiel des Jahres 2012 award in the 3-6 years category!

Educational

Is Carcassonne Junior a game for education? Absolutely!
In practice, Carcassonne Junior takes about 20 minutes and has simple rules, so you can learn to play it quickly. The tiles eventually form a landscape that you see from above. Assessing top views fits in with a number of core objectives in primary education, particularly spatial orientation.

Besides introducing you to geometry and spatial insight, playing this game also offers many opportunities to expand language and vocabulary. After the game, look at the playing field and name together everything you can see. Think of the animals, the buildings, the children and the landscape. Also see if you can find the longest and shortest road or count, for example, the number of dogs and cats.
You also work on a number of executive skills. We mention organisation and planning/prioritising here. The first involves forming the field by laying the tiles. Everyone must be able to see everything clearly and everything must stay where it lies. The second means planning ahead by thinking about where best to lay your tiles in order to be the first to place your meeples.