Practice Math Through Card Game War
For an incredibly simple card game, War has much to teach children.
Materials
It’s great practice for number recognition and number values. There’s no strategy or skill involved, which also makes War a great game to learn about winning and losing — children are challenged to handle an outcome out of their control.
Here’s the basic version, along with a few twists to play with younger or older children:
Prepare the deck. For young children, remove all J, Q, K and A cards, playing only with cards numbered 2 through 10 for number recognition.
Deal the cards evenly between all players. If you have more than four people, you’ll want to use a double deck.
Give each person a stack of cards, facedown. Don’t look! On the count of three, each player flips their top card over into the center of the table. For an advanced version, have each player flip two cards.
The highest card wins that hand (aces are high) and takes the cards played as their own. They can add the cards won to their stack of cards. This step requires young children to figure out which card is greater than the other. If your child is having trouble, help your child count the number of symbols (hearts, diamonds, etc) on the card. Ask, “Which number do you get to first? That number is less than the other.” For the advanced version, apply addition, subtraction, or multiplication to the cards flipped to determine the value of each hand.
In the event of a tie between the highest two players, you have a “duel.” To play a duel, the players who tied each lay down three cards, facedown, then lay down a fourth card, faceup. The highest card wins the whole lot of cards played! To make the game last longer, use one card for duels instead of four.
Repeat steps three and four. When you run out of cards, you’re out of the game. The last player with cards wins!
If you’re crazy about cards, check out these cool magic tricks to impress your children — unless they impress you first.
Jamie learned to be a hands-on mom by creating activities, crafts and art projects for her three boys to do and shares them on hands on : as we grow. Jamie takes the creative outlet as a way to get through the early years of parenting with a smile!
Math