All With A Deck of Cards

If you are like many families, you have lots of decks of cards, but many may be missing one or two. The good news is they can still provide a fun way to enhance math skills, so repurpose them!

One of my family members invented a great math scavenger hunt for his child. You will need  one set of cards 2 - 10 any suit, (no Ace, King, Queen, Jack).  This will be easier if your child already  recognizes numbers and understands ordinance; if not, this can be done with a parent and it will help them learn those things.  Hide the cards around a room. Have your child find the cards in numerical order. If they find one out of order, they just leave it and keep looking. Cheer them on and give them a big pat on the back when they have found all 9 cards in order!

Sorting is another math activity that a deck of cards is quite useful for. Depending on the age of your children, you can use part of a deck or all the cards you have. There are several sorting options:
Sort by color
Sort by pictures, i.e. suits - clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades
Sort by numbers

Matching is a simple game to play with cards. Decide how many pairs you want to include depending on your child's age. Place cards face down and begin by letting your child choose one card, then another. Take turns, remembering which cards were turned up where and trying to make a match. If you make a match, you get to choose two cards again. If not, it is the other person's turn. Continue until all the cards have been matched. Don't be surprised if your little one helps you out!

Higher - lower involves understanding amounts the numbers on the cards represent.  Simply pull two cards from the stack of cards containing only numbers and have the child declare which is higher, which is lower. With a younger child, you could have some beans, legos. or blocks and have them count out the pieces separately that correspond to the numbers on each card. Then they can visually see and count and hopefully determine the higher number. Obviously, the card game War is just a competitive version of this which would be fund to teach the older kids.

Cards work well to practice Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication, too. Depending on the age of your child, choose what operation or what the goal will be when they choose their cards. Since each card will have a corresponding number of clubs, diamonds, etc. on them, for addition, the children can also count them up rather than do it in their heads. You can be the judge of what works and is educational without frustrating for each of your children.

Let's Build!  Building, a STEM activity,  requires creativity and problem solving. Using a deck of cards, have your child build something, anything.... a single level house, a multi level house, a tower. This will also tap into your child's patience which is a great topic to talk about. A failure is not a failure unless you don't keep trying.

Lastly, teach your children some real card games. Math and sorting will always be involved, but more importantly,  they will learn new games that the family can play together forever.