Everything you need to set up, play and enjoy Snakes and Ladders with a young child, from the basic rules to toddler-friendly variations that build number sense, language and resilience.
To play Snakes and Ladders with a five-year-old, each player places their counter on square one, takes turns rolling a single die, and moves their counter forward by that number of squares. Land at the foot of a ladder and you climb to the square at the top. Land on a snake's head and you slide down to its tail. The first player to reach exactly square 100 wins. That is truly all there is to it, and that simplicity is precisely the point. Because the outcome depends almost entirely on chance, a five-year-old stands every bit as good a chance of winning as a grown-up, which makes the game feel thrillingly fair to a child who so rarely gets to win anything.
If your child is new to board games, start with short sessions of ten to fifteen minutes, let them handle their own counter from the very first turn, and narrate what is happening in lively, story-like language. The rules need never be read from a leaflet. They can simply be lived, square by square, as the game unfolds.
Snakes and Ladders traces its roots to ancient India, where it was known as Moksha Patam, a game of moral instruction in which virtues carried players upward and vices sent them tumbling. By the Victorian era it had made its way to Britain, where it became a staple of family parlours, and it has barely changed since. Jaques of London, established in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, has been part of that long tradition: a heritage that encompasses the codification of croquet in 1851 and the creation of the Staunton chess set in 1849, and which continues today in beautifully made sets built to last across generations.
Children love Snakes and Ladders for a reason that has nothing to do with strategy. The die is completely impartial. No amount of adult experience, vocabulary or height advantage changes what number comes up, which means a five-year-old can look across the board and know, with absolute certainty, that they might win. That sense of genuine possibility is motivating and joyful in equal measure. A well-made wooden set adds to the pleasure: chunky counters that small fingers can grasp and move with confidence, a satisfying die that rattles properly in a cup, and a board whose colours and illustrations invite lingering attention.
You need a numbered board running from square 1 to square 100, one die, and one counter per player. Snakes are printed with their heads on higher-numbered squares and their tails on lower ones. Ladders have their bases on lower squares and their tops on higher ones. Nothing else is required. A wooden set from Jaques of London brings tactile warmth to all of these components: the board lies flat and inviting, the pieces feel substantial in a small hand, and the whole set can be packed away and brought out again for years to come.
Browse Jaques of London Traditional GamesSet up by placing every counter on the starting position just off square 1. Decide who goes first with a single roll of the die, the highest number beginning. On your turn, roll the die and move your counter forward that many squares, counting each one aloud as you go. If your counter lands precisely on the bottom of a ladder, move it to the square at the top. If it lands on the head of a snake, move it to the square at the snake's tail. If no snake or ladder is present, your counter simply stays where it landed.
To win, a player must land on square 100 with an exact number. If a player is on square 97 and rolls a 5, they do not move at all that turn, because 102 does not exist. They wait and try again next round. This exact-number rule adds a small, delicious tension to the final stages of the game, and is worth keeping even with young children, who tend to find the suspense more thrilling than frustrating once they understand it.
A note on turn-taking
Letting your child physically move their own counter, rather than doing it for them, builds fine motor control, reinforces one-to-one counting, and gives each turn a sense of ownership. Resist the temptation to help unless asked.
The greatest gift you can give during a game of Snakes and Ladders is your unhurried conversational attention. Hart and Risley's landmark research into early language development found that the quantity and quality of words exchanged between a caregiver and child, including the back-and-forth of conversational turns, is one of the strongest predictors of vocabulary and cognitive growth. A board game is, among other things, a structured excuse for exactly that kind of exchange. Name the squares, wonder aloud about the snakes, ask your child what they think will happen next.
Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development offers a useful framework here. A five-year-old may not yet be able to count reliably to twenty without support, but with a parent counting alongside them, square by square, they can do it with growing confidence. That shared counting is scaffolding in its purest form: you are not doing it for them, you are doing it with them, until they no longer need you to.
Keep sessions short. Two or three games of ten minutes each will serve a young child better than one long sitting. Follow the child's energy, and if they want to stop mid-game, let them.
Landing on a long snake just as you were approaching square 100 is genuinely disappointing, and a five-year-old's nervous system does not yet have the regulatory capacity to absorb that disappointment quietly. Jaak Panksepp, whose work on the emotional circuitry of play shaped much of our understanding of childhood behaviour, argued that play is one of the primary emotional systems in the mammalian brain: it is never merely frivolous. The feelings it generates, including frustration and loss, are real and neurologically significant.
Alison Gopnik's research on children's emotional learning suggests that low-stakes games, precisely because the consequences are small, are ideal environments for children to encounter and practise managing difficult feelings. The snake is not the end of the world, even though it feels that way for a moment, and surviving that moment with a warm adult beside them teaches something no worksheet can.
Phrases that help
"Oh, that snake was sneaky. Shall we count where it took you?" · "That felt gutting, didn't it. You're still in the game." · "I landed on one of those earlier. It's rubbish, and then it gets better." Simple, honest acknowledgement without minimising tends to help children move through the feeling rather than becoming stuck in it.
Before moving any counter, both players count the squares aloud in unison. This turns every turn into a brief, purposeful numeracy moment. Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff's research into play-based learning confirms that embedding number practice inside a game children find genuinely motivating produces far richer engagement than drill-based exercises.
Before a player climbs a ladder or slides down a snake, they must invent a brief reason why. Perhaps the ladder is there because a kind rabbit built it for travellers. Perhaps the snake slides you back because you forgot to say thank you at the market. This variation builds narrative language, creativity and causal thinking, and makes the board feel genuinely alive. Trawick-Smith's research on adult-supported play highlights how a responsive adult who follows the child's imaginative lead, rather than directing it, produces the richest language and learning outcomes.
Both players share a single counter and take turns rolling the die, working together to reach square 100. Snakes become a shared setback to commiserate over, ladders a shared triumph to celebrate. This removes competitive pressure entirely, which can be particularly valuable for children still finding their emotional footing with games. It also places turn-taking at the heart of the experience, building one of the most important social skills of early childhood.
Plastic pieces break, splinter at the edges, and tend to feel light in a small hand. Wooden pieces have heft, warmth and durability: they can be dropped, lost under the sofa and retrieved, and they will still look and feel good a decade later. For under-fives, the sensory quality of a toy matters. A child who can feel the grain of a wooden counter, hear the satisfying clatter of a proper die, and see bold, clear illustrations on a well-printed board is more likely to stay engaged, more likely to return to the game, and more likely to associate games with pleasure and comfort.
Jaques of London has been making games of this quality since 1795. Choosing a set from a maker with that depth of craft is not an indulgence: it is a considered investment in something your child will use, and perhaps one day pass on.
Explore Jaques of London Wooden ToysThis is entirely normal at age five, and it does not mean the game is wrong for your child. Acknowledge the feeling directly and briefly, then redirect attention to what happens next rather than dwelling on the emotion itself. Over several sessions, many children develop a kind of wry familiarity with the snake: it becomes part of the story rather than a catastrophe. If tears are consistently overwhelming, try the co-operative variation above, or play on a smaller board with fewer squares, so the stakes of any single slide feel lower.
Most children can grasp the core rules, roll the die, count squares and follow the snake-or-ladder logic somewhere between the ages of four and five, though there is wide variation. Piaget's work on preoperational thinking reminds us that children at this stage learn most effectively through concrete, hands-on experience rather than verbal explanation. Letting the game teach the rules by playing through them, rather than explaining them in advance, tends to work far better than a briefing before the first move.
Yes, and it often works rather well with three or four players, as more counters on the board means more frequent encounters with snakes and ladders, which keeps the energy lively. Each player needs a distinct counter they can identify as their own. With young children, two to three players is usually the sweet spot before waiting times between turns become long enough to test a five-year-old's patience.
In Snakes and Ladders, this question is largely answered by the game itself: because the outcome is determined by chance, you are not really in a position to let your child win without obvious manipulation, which most children detect and find unsatisfying. The more useful question is how you respond to both outcomes. Celebrating your child's wins warmly and modelling gracious losing yourself, commenting lightly on your own snake encounters, is one of the most effective things you can do. Gopnik's research suggests that children learn emotional regulation far more from watching adults navigate feelings than from being protected from difficult ones.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.