My four-year-old is big into card games. I’m delighting in the fact that he’s now old enough to play games with a standard deck, which expands our possibilities for travel entertainment. I was able to teach him Go Fish and Crazy Eights, but had, however, forgotten how to play War. My tastes in games have run to the more complex over the years, and the simple ones have fallen by the wayside.
I was happy, therefore, to find Wikipedia coming to the rescue. Its page of Card Games has links to rules for dozens of games, categorized by style (trick-taking games, rummy style games, etc.) I can’t vouch for how “official” any of the rules are (Wikipedia needing a heavy dose of salt at times), but they should get you through a few hours of a rainy day with your kids. (I’ve renamed “War” to the slightly less violent “Capture” when I play with my son, though.)
What are your favorite card games from childhood (or even now)? Those of you with older kids: how old were they when they started beating you for real?
A good game for kids would be King’s Corner. Or Spoons.
This is excellent! i have great memories of learning and playing all kinds of card games with my mom when i was a kid.
i’m just curious, though–although i flinched a little at “war”, i’m not sure i see how “capture” is any less violent. i think i’d be inclined to continue to call it “war” because it really represents what the game is. it’s a head-to-head battle. clean and honest. it’s actually a much better representation of what was intended to be rather than what it’s become in this country.
I LOVE spoons!
My kids, age 5 and 7, love to play a REALLY simple game called Steal the Pile. We play with 2 or 3 decks and you pass out all the cards evenly but leave like 6 to turn face up in the middle. One at a time you turn the top card on your stack over and if it matches the top card of another players discard pile you can steal their whole discard pile, adding it to yours and placing your original card on top. If it doesn’t match a discard pile or no one has a discard pile you can try matching it to one in the middle. If it matches you can take it and place it and your original card face up in a discard pile. If it does not match you simply place it in the middle with the rest. When all the cards have been turned over, whoever has the biggest pile wins! :)
Oh, good ideas all!
Robin, to answer your question: I agree “Capture” isn’t exactly passive. In a game where you take the other person’s cards, there’s only so passive you can be–but “War” always had a connotation of mass violence to me. “Capture” was at least a little more one-on-one. Just my opinion; I won’t look askance at those who do otherwise.
When my son was about 5, we used regular playing cards to play Concentration fairly often, initially just with a dozen or so cards, then later with half a deck. He was 7 when some friends and I taught him how to play Blackjack at a Halloween party. The nuances of betting were way beyond him, but adding up to 21 was pretty good math practice!
A few weeks ago my wife found a politically correct war card game at Target. It it pretty funny in that whenever you have a tie, you trade decks and the point is to have one person run out of cards and both players win. Another great card suggestion that I haven’t seen here is Uno. Yes, you have to get another deck but you can play with 2 or 3 or 4 players. They even make decks with pokemons or doras or whatever you like on them.