I love a good card game. When my oldest was a baby I had serious daydreams of teaching him all sorts of games we could play and having family game night every week. Then we had two more kids in 3.5 years and never got around to teaching him. Now I’m backtracking and trying to teach them all how to play a game at once. And it’s 200% NOT for the faint of heart. So far we’ve had exactly 2 family game nights and they have both ended in tears. Mostly it’s because we as parents put too much pressure on the idea of a perfect game night. But also it’s because kids are unpredictable at best and card and board games have a lot of rules to follow. It’s a total recipe for disaster.

So now we modify all our games to their levels. It means there is a lot of “loose” rules that are played, but as long as it holds their interest, I count it as a win. When I bought Uno for Brixton for Christmas last year, I knew it was going to be the perfect intro game for all of us. Except it wasn’t. Not even a little bit. The game is simple enough, except there are still a lot of rules. And there is no real time limit on the game. One hand may take 15 minutes, the next may take 45. It’s not a good system for ansty toddlers or preschoolers.

Insert Uno Cards and Plus Plus Blocks! We recently got our Plus Plus blocks and have been loving all the ways to use them. But this simple set up may be the best one yet. I pulled out all the “extra” cards from the deck and just kept the number ones in. Then I pulled out *enough* blocks in the 4 colors for everyone to be able to play at once.

I modified it for each of the boys to make sure it wasn’t something that would overwhelm them. For Everett (20 months) it was a simple color match game. Pick a card ➡️ find the matching color block

Colston (3) worked on one-to-one correspondence. Pick a card ➡️ count that number of matching color blocks. This has been a real struggle for him. He can count to 10, but it hasn’t quite clicked yet that those numbers have a meaning to them as well. We’re working on it.

Brixton (4) continued building his math skills. Draw 2 cards ➡️ count out the correct number of matching blocks ➡️ add them up!

This was such a fun activity and kept all three coming back over and over throughout the day. I ended up keeping the blocks and cards in that bin and keeping it accessible to them for the next few days. They didn’t play with it as much as the first day, but it was still a hit for quiet time for a couple of days. And that is a huge win for me 😉

How do you handle card games with littles? Are you a stickler for the rules, or are they just suggestions? Do you have any other ideas for modifying card games to turn them into learning games instead? Let me know in the comments or tag us on Instagram @thebplusmama and give us a follow to see what we’re up to on a day-to-day basis!