Pengoloo

You roll two coloured dice and lift wooden penguins off the ice to find the eggs hiding underneath in the colours you rolled. Twelve penguins each sit on a coloured egg. Find a match and the penguin comes to your iceberg; find both and you roll again. Find neither and the penguins go back, but everyone saw what was under them, so the next player is a little wiser. The first to gather six penguins wins. It is a memory game first and a dice game second, and the chunky pieces are the reason four-year-olds ask for it by name. A game takes ten minutes, and the optional stealing rule adds enough bite for older siblings. This is the Kids-shelf game we recommend most often as a first gift.