This month School-age 3 at RisingOaks Early Learning | St. Luke has gotten into cards. From classics like solitaire and president, to newer games like pizza party. Educator Vanessa has helped teach a few children, such as Bentley, Aaron, and Blake, how to play solitaire, a single player card game of sequencing, problem solving, and strategy. They took to it quickly, enjoying the brain teasing nature of the game, and reminded others, such as Liam and Sophia Rose, about how fun it can be. Solitaire is a great way to work on number recognition as well as problem solving, skills that are so important in developing math skills! President is another card game we have been playing, developing our skills even further in number sequencing and strategy!
Solitaire was the first to be introduced, starting with Bentley, someone who wanted to play cards but had no one to play with at the moment. Vanessa saw this and sat next to him, teaching him how to have fun with just a single deck. This was a great learning experience as he learned the rules. Sequencing the cards was the first part, using our developed numeration skills. Next was the pattern, the cards had to stack one colour over the other, this made the sequencing more difficult as we needed the right number AND colour. It was easier for some, learning the game took equal skill and luck after all, but now we know another fun game! Watching Vanessa teach Bentley inspired others to learn as well and quickly became a favourite for the group. Aaron, however, did have a bit of difficulty at first as he confused the rules with Speed, another popular game among the children, but quickly caught on to the differences and was able to successfully complete a round.
After solitaire we began playing President. While it was noted Canada had a Prime Minister and not a President we still called it as it was. This game had a different set of rules to learn. The goal was to be the first to get rid of their cards: sounds easy right? Well some found it more difficult, having to learn strategies on the best time to use their “wild” cards. The wild cards were 2’s and Jokers, they could be played on anything, though Jokers were stronger than 2’s. If a player had the same cards and wanted to start the next round they could “burn” the pile by placing the matching card set on what was played. Another fun sequencing game that was played in tandem to solitaire, sometimes happening at the exact same table. This game has been popular among groups of peers since multiple players can join, and to add an extra element to it, the children have even combined two decks of cards.
Finally, where we were most comfortable with, were the games we’d learned from last year. These were our classics. Uno was top of the card games, coming in with different versions to occasionally spice things up. There were two versions played as well as our base game set. We had Uno Flip, and Uno No Mercy. These had extra rules like flipping the whole deck over to play the other colour set, or even pick up ten! Hannah, especially, enjoyed the flip version of the game and frequently asked Vanessa to bring it back to the program. Adding new rules to an already favourite game made it so much more fun to play!
Then finally, came the last few classic card games, Mantis, Pizza Party, and Dungeon Mayhem. These games were introduced early on and we latched on to quickly. Pizza Party was a race to complete a pizza the fastest by rolling dice that matched the slices. This one-on-one duel had a few devoted fans whose first choice of card games was this. Mantis involved collecting cards in your own deck, while “claiming, stealing, grabbing, giving” to an opponent; the goal is to have no cards left in play and then the player with the most cards at the end wins. Finally, Dungeon Mayhem, a newer of the classics, came earlier this year. This battle royal in card form had most of the group hooked! Managing shields, health points, and attack cards all at the same time took strategic thinking and planning ahead. It has been one of our favourites for possibly the longest so far this year. This has been an amazing month for all these games! We hope it’s in the cards to get to learn even more of these fun games!