In this classic game, children try to get 4 checkers in a row on the grid. The tricky part is that children must take gravity into consideration. The grid is perpendicular to the floor, so that when a checker is inserted into a column, it drops to the lowest position in that column. This can be challenging for children who focus on the space that they want their checker to occupy and fail to consider that the space below it is empty.
Young children also frequently have trouble recognizing diagonal rows; they focus only on horizontal and vertical rows and miss diagonals. So this game helps children to decenter to consider all possible rows.
The 42-space grid (6 rows and 7 columns) contains 69 possible rows of 4. Because the number of possibilities is so great, children have the opportunity to learn that they must pay close attention to the grid and how it changes after each turn.
Connect Four, available in most toy stores, is made by Milton Bradley.
Recommended # of players: 2
Click here to download the game.