One Deck of Cards Equals Hours of Enjoyment
Well, it is going to be hard to follow up with some great material after such an amazing announcement yesterday from Meredith, but I will do my best!
My son is five years old and we have begun teaching him how to play cards. No, we haven't taught him poker just yet, but just some good old-fashioned card games that I enjoyed as a child. It is truly amazing all of the games that can be played with one deck of cards, and so many of these games are appropriate for younger children. Instead of buying those specialized decks of cards from the dollar store, invest in a regular deck of cards and learn how to play all the card games using these instead. Games like Old Maid & Crazy Eights can also be played with a regular deck of cards, you just need to know how to do it.
Imagine, one long rainy afternoon or being stuck in a hotel room on a vacation... Imagine if you could pull just one small deck of cards out of your purse and create an afternoon of activity, how awesome would that be? That is why I am trying to learn how to play these games and I hope someday that Emily & Ethan will be able to play them together and I can prop my feet up on the couch and read a magazine. Pipe dreams, I know, but that is the ultimate goal.
The first game I taught Ethan as how to play, "War." This was a favorite game of mine growing up and one that my sister & could play for hours on end.
Rules for War
Shuffle the cards well. Deal the entire deck, keeping all of the cards down and no peeking. To begin, both players turn their top cards simultaneously and place them side by side, face up, in the center. The one who plays the higher ranking card gets to keep both the cards (Aces are high in this game). These cards are added to the bottom of the winner's stack.
When both players turn over cards of the same rank (you have an Ace, they have an Ace), "war" is declared. Smaller children really get into this and we started to shout, "War!" out together. Each player then places the top three cards from his stack face down on the original card. Then each places a fourth card face up on top of the three face-down cards. The higher face-up card will win all of the ten cards. If these match you can declare a, "DOUBLE WAR!" (be sure to shout it for added enjoyment) and then the battle continues.
Whomever ends up with the entire deck of cards is the winner. A player can also win if their opponent runs out of cards in the middle of the war.
There are variations on War that I am looking forward to exploring, but I wanted to start with an easy game for a 5 year old.
You can also add in your own rules. Ethan decided that, "The loser gets lots of popcorn," but only when he lost. The winner also, "got more lemonade," but only when he won. When I lost though, I "just lost." Yes, those can be the challenges when playing with a 5 year old kid!
The second game I have taught him is how to play Old Maid. This was the first card game that I learned and we had a funny deck of cards with an old lady in a rocking chair. Just to be politically correct though, you can switch this up and play a game of "Old Boy," and make the Jack the old lady.
Rules for Old Maid
This game is great for kids between 5-10, because it is easy to learn and to play. This game is more fun if you have 3-6 players, but you can play with two players (which is easier for smaller children and putting together matches).
Before you can begin, remove all of the Queens in the deck except for one. Shuffle and distribute the cards, one at a time and face down.
Each player looks at their hands and pulls out any two cards that match in rank. Each player lays his match face down in a pile beside him. If a player has three cards of the same number, one stays in his hand.
After matches are all sorted, fan out your cards for the other player to grab from. Keep taking turns and making matches. Since there is only one Queen, the Old Maid, no match can be made for her. At the end of the hand, the player left holding the Old Maid loses the game.
Sound Off: What are some of your favorite games to play with your children?
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11 Responses to “One Deck of Cards Equals Hours of Enjoyment”
April 8th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Spoons is a lot of fun.
One deck of cards and Players-1 number of spoons (If you have 4 players, you have three spoons). Put the spoons in the center of the table. Deal 4 cards to every player. The object is to get 4 of a kind. The dealer has the rest of the deck. He says “1 2 3 pass!” and on “pass” all players discard one card to the player on the left. The dealer picks up from the deck, and the las player discards to a trash pile.
When someone gets 4 of a kind, he takes a spoon. All other players grab for spoons until there is one player without. That player gets an “S.” When you spell “Spoon” you are out.
If you go through the whole deck, the dealer shuffles the trash pile and play continues.
it’s a riot.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Buddy LOVES playing go fish. We have a little bitty mini deck that comes in a small metal tin (like 1/4 of the size of a reg playing card) that I bought for $.25 or something at the thrift shop. It has the pictures of fish on it. We play that 2 cards makes a pair (rather than needing all 4) so that it’s a bit easier on little folks.
I keep the deck in my purse and any time we are stuck waiting somewhere I can keep the kiddos occupied!
April 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am
A deck of cards can also be a home gym. My oldest son regularly uses the gym on campus at U of I but when he comes home and doesn’t have access to the gym he works out with a deck of cards.
Here is the way it works:
Draw 5 cards.
Add up the numbers on the cards.
Do that many jumping jacks, crunches and push-ups.
Rest for that many seconds.
Draw 5 more cards.
Repeat the process until you work through the whole deck.
It may take a while before you are able to complete the whole deck but do a little more each workout and soon you will be exercising your way through 52 cards.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Don’t forget things like memory-have the kids match red 2’s or black 3’s… Then there’s sorting for young ones-match up numbers or suits…There is all kinds of fun to be had with cards.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
When my boys were small, I created a deck of cards in Publisher which had a pretty back (they each chose an image, usually grayscale clipart found at a royalty-free site) and the front had a NUMERAL on it, no pips. Values 1-13 and four suits equal a ‘regualr’ deck, but my three-year-olds LOVEd a simple deck of 1-9. Suits were indicated by either four different fonts or, later, four colors of the same font.
Why? Because kids have a powerful reason to associate the NUMERAL with the value instead of continually counting pips.
What to do? War– Try several variations: Set a value near your child’s counting limit (at three, it was between twenty and thirty, at four we used fifty or seventy five, and by age five it was often well above 100). THEN- players turn over cards as usual, BUT you
- add both cards together and the winner of the flip adds the total toward their ’score’. First to reach the goal amount wins.
- start with the goal score and SUBTRACT in the same way as above, and the winner is the first to reach 0.
- Each player keeps their score individually BUT, the winner of a round gets a SMALL bonus: the difference between their card and the losing card. So 8 and 3 are cast, the winner adds a bonusu five points to their score. Works for either addition or subtraction.
-very simple and for my kids a very LOUD variation: One person is “odds” and the other “evens”. Game play is as normal except the players alos calculate EITHER the sum or the difference between cards and slap their hand onto the pair, shouting “odd” or “even”. The 6yo liked to try to psych out his 3.5yo brother, so we instituted a four-point penalty for the second or later “mistake”. A drew 8, B drew three, the child who’d chosen “odd” would win the toss. HINT: GIVE YOURSELF “ODD” when playing one-on-one with your child. Yes, they win more often, *G*.
Start with a “resource pool”– something small and fairly healthy, but not messy. Cheerios are better than hulled sunflower seeds, and ten years later I still can’t LOOK at colored mini-marshmallows, so be WARNED. This works best for early years, and there’s a lot of munching, so only play one or two games this way. Make up some rule “numbers bigger than my age” or “numbers smaller than the number of people in our family”. THEN play as normally and whenever *your* card falls within the rule, you get a munchie or two. It’s a good transition into “extra rules” forms of the game, but it’s also a lot of fun purely for rules like “Number of people in the waiting room wearing pagers.” It was amazing what the kids NOTICED casually about the world around them!
I could go on and on– we had about a hundred variations between ‘war’ and ‘go fish’ ALONE, so instead I’ll close with some printing tips: regular cards are close to 2.5″ wide and 3.5″ long, but some of the boys’ favorite decks were 2*3″ cards made from extra vocabulary flash cards I had on hand, so don’t feel bound to the “normal” size. Print EITHER fronts or backs on card stock, then leave them overnight under a book and print the reverse side the next day. There’s less color bleedover, less smudging at the feed points, and less chance of slipping.
HAVE FUN.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
WOW! You guys are amazing! I am loving this discussion on card playing. I thought this would be a fun one, just didn’t know how inventive you all were
April 8th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Commenting again!
I’m a member of a Welsh-learning group for adults. To learn the colors in Welsh, I made a deck of playing cards with one Celtic knot design in the center, then colored it nine different colors (think Crayola 8-box plus gray). I printed the deck, just four sheets of card stock, and we played ‘go fish’ in Welsh. NEVER underestimate your kids’ ability to absorb and RETAIN information while playing. My boys, age 12 and 14 at the time, played less than half a dozen hands with me to test the quality of the new printer and BOTH know four of the nine colors a year later.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
My son is only just 2, but we like to play (a simplified version of) Go Fish, which you can play with regular cards, and we have a small memory game, which you could adapt the cards to play.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I used to have so much fun playing cards with my dad when I was growing up. Thanks for the reminder. I’m off to play with my five year old!! …many years of fun ahead!!
April 10th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Here is a fun, inexpensive card holder to make for your kids as they are learning how to hold all these cards.
Take two butter tub or cool whip lids.
Put them together top inwards… lip out.
Staple or glue together in the center.
Let your kids decorate their card holders with fun stickers, etc.
Cards are placed between the two lids around the top and sides.
My kids LOVED these and we had to make them for every child that came to our house and played cards. We even made them for a friend who was in a rehab center because she couldn’t hold her cards.
I hope I described the “how to’s” clearly enough.
May 16th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
You HAVE to play Egyptian Ratscrew! It is really fun! Just ‘Google’ Egyptian Ratscrew to find the instructions.
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