Playing Cards With Two-Year-Olds
Teaching our little geeks to play games nicely with us
One of the cool things we started doing a few months ago is playing cards with Gwen. She loved her flashcards, but we just played matching games with them. Then we found the Barbapapa cards. I pointed them out and Bruce remembered something he read about how three-year-olds could happily play simple card games to get used to taking turns (Gwen’s two).
It’s a happy families set, which is far too advanced a game for her, but that doesn’t matter. She loves Barbapapa and she really gets into the games we made up for the cards.
Essentially, we play a turn-based co-operative sorting game, where the aim is to get all the cards sorted. Yes, we take turns to put cards into colours, or numbers, or Barbapapa characters (this one is the hardest for her). She’s actually really good, and she loves taking turns and using proper game-playing terms.
Which is why we do this. We hope it will substantially shorten the time before she’s happy to play all the really good games with us. ☺ And, of course, Blaise when he’s up to it.
