Teaching my Kids Risk

At the start of this summer I purchased a couple of strategy based board games to play with the kids during summer break.  The first we played is a classic, Risk.  If you are unfamiliar, Risk is a board game in which each player stakes out geographical ground and then must attempt to defeat the armies of all other players and obtain world domination.  I've played Risk before, although it has been many years.  We started by placing our armies as shown below.

I quickly laid claim to Australia.  :-)  Check out my troops in Southeast Asia protecting Australia.  :-)

I ended up winning the game but my 6 year old was holding her own for quite some time!  They had a lot of fun playing and that was my goal.  Risk requires much strategy and critical thinking skills and my hope is playing games such as these, they'll have fun and develop those critical thinking skills at the same time.  Up next?  Settlers of Catan!