Our family loves board games, and we love being competitive, keeping running scores that last for months and years, and cheering the little guys on when they're just learning to play a game the rest of us have loved forever.

Because of our rather cut-throat nature (all in good fun, I assure you), cooperative games have not really been on my radar. Where's the fun in not having a strategy or stroke of luck that outsmarts your opponent? Still, I thought my littlest family members might enjoy Peaceable Kingdom's Stone Soup, and so we gave it a try. Right away I could see where the fun of a cooperative game is. It's in the group strategy, the group setbacks, and the group triumphs. We had plenty of each.

Stone Soup is a memory game, much like the traditional memory games where players lay the cards face down and try to find the matching cards. The cooperative part comes when players must put their matching cards into the "kettle" to make a pot of "Stone Soup." If players pick up a "Fire Out" card, it goes onto the kettle's fire. But if 10 Fire Out cards are picked up, the game is over.

We most often play Stone Soup with the 10-year-old, 7-year-old, and 4-year-old. The excitement builds as Fire Out cards are drawn, and all three players work hard to help each other find the different matching ingredient cards to make their Stone Soup. And big surprise to this seasoned game player--it's a lot of fun. Two thumbs up for Stone Soup!