Whether you’re a parent in search of ways to entertain during the school holidays, or you’re a teacher or youth worker looking for activities that stimulate young minds, here’s why card games for kids are a great option, as well as our suggestions for the best free kids’ card games to play. It wasn’t until the 14th century that they began to spread throughout Europe today the suits we are most familiar with (hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades) are of French descent.Ĭard games remain a popular pastime all around the world for both children and adults. The earliest evidence of their use dates back to China in the 9th century, when it is believed the cards doubled up as a form of currency. If possible, review the cards prior to playing – repeated exposure to sight words helps a child automatically recognize sight words.Ī free version of Old Maid, or Mighty Maid can be found here.Card games using traditional playing cards have been around for thousands of years. Many sight words are phonetically irregular so they will need to be learned as whole words. If your child doesn’t automatically recognize the word, help them to pronounce it or have another child read it. Since the underlying object of this game is to develop a sight word vocabulary, every time a pair is “retired“ – it should be read aloud. When I possess the mighty maid card, I like to strategically place it slightly higher than the other cards – in hopes it will be selected. I prefer to fan out my cards but that can be burdensome to a child with small hands.

Eventually, all the cards will be “retired” with the exception of the mighty maid card and the player that holds this card loses the game. Play continues clockwise so the player who just had a card taken would select a card from the person to his left and so on. If she has a pair, she would place the two cards face up on the table. The youngest player starts by selecting a card from the player to her left – she should not allow anyone to see it.

As a general rule, each player will select a faced down card from the player to the left. Each player will look at their cards and discard any pairs. To begin, deal out all of the mighty maid game cards. The object of this game is to avoid holding the old maid card at the end of the game.

Rules for old maid cards