Learning And Cards

Baba is at that age where he constantly wants to learn new things.

Favourite sayings at the moment are “What does that say?” “Why does that do that?” “What’s this?” etc

He is literally a sponge soaking up all the information possible, and as he soaks it up he is absorbing it all and then he passes on everything that he learns. It comes out at random times, but it doesn’t matter as it proves that he is taking everything you say to him, and show him in.

We naturally as a family are card players, my Nan was a bit a serious card player, and taught my sister and I both to play cards. Whenever she came over you would end up playing cards, and my mum has passed this skill onto her grandchildren. Baba’s cousins are pretty good at it now and Baba is trying his hardest to learn.

He isn’t that great but he is loving playing cards and he is learning the things that he needs to learn from the cards at the moment.

We have various games that we play with a pack of playing cards all around the idea of snap!

1) Black and Red Snap – this is the most basic of games, playing snap matching the red and black cards together. (Teaching colours)

2) Card Suit Snap – this is a step up from red and black snap, we snap the diamonds, heart, spades and clubs together. (Great for teaching shapes)

3) Number snap – this is the hardest snap to play with playing cards. But I have noticed a real difference in Baba’s counting. He has been able to count for ages but he is now correctly counting as he is touching items with his fingers and because each card also has the number on them he is starting to recognise the numbers that are on the cards. (Great for counting and recognising numbers)

We have also been doing the Memory game with playing cards. Again at two different levels. Just finding cards of the same suit or finding cards of the same number which does take a bit longer but is still great for number recognition.

Doing these games means that Baba is constantly learning, but he also doesn’t feel different to his older cousins, as he thinks he is playing the same game as the rest of them. So it means he feels included.

It is also a really great and cheap, fun way to teach him about numbers, shapes, colours and counting.

Do you do any learning games with a pack of cards?