Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is a game we play often. The kids like the challenge of finding new routes to different cities, I like that it is a completely non-violent game and it improves their geography and math skills. We've all gotten a much better idea where the cities are located and how far it is between different places.

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Ticket to Ride starts by dealing out three tickets.  Players look at the routes on the tickets and choose which two they'd like to keep.  If you're lucky, you get two tickets that overlap most of the way (like Los Angles/Chicago and San Francisco/New York).  You can draw more tickets throughout the game to additional points at the end.

The game is played by drawing colored cards that represent different types of train cars.  Once you have a set of cars that matches a route between two cities, you can claim that track by placing your train cars on the route.  Longer routes are worth more points.  For example, a route that takes two train cars is worth two points, while a route that takes six train cars is worth 15 points.  Players learn to save up for longer routes.

When we first starting playing the game, my 7y wasn't even sure how to pronounce the names of some of the cities like Santa Fe or Pittsburgh.  Fortunately all the tickets have a small map of North America with dots to show where the two cities are located.  After playing the game a few times, he can quickly find any of the cities on the map.;

We've all learned a lot about geography.  I hadn't realized that New Orleans/Miami was about the same distance as Houston/El Paso or Calgary/Winnipeg.

Ticket to Ride is an easy game to learn and can be played by 2-5 players in about half an hour.

Ticket to Ride is a beautifully illustrated coast-to-coast railroad journey. You earn points by claiming train routes, completing tickets and by building the longest routes. Great game for helping kids learn North American geography.  There's a Ticket to Ride Europe if you want an international adventure.  For 2 to 5 players ages 8y and up. Ticket to Ride