Our kids love the card game War, so I’ve been trying modifiers to make it fun. A betting variant: peek at your next card but place it face down before revealing it. Use additional cards from your deck to do basic poker betting before revealing.
Instant hit, clear even to a 6yo!
Conversation
One of the more interesting books I read in learning science, Young Children Reinvent Arithmetic, had kids learn first grade math with zero explicit instruction, just by giving them games to play. One was "double war": each person flips two cards; highest sum wins.
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The notion was that kids would initially play by "counting up" from one card on their fingers, but that made playing less fun, so they quickly learned their sum tables to make playing more smooth.
Interesting note also: no need for a teacher to "check work" because the other kid is incentivized to make sure their opponent is adding the pair correctly!
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Somehow missed these replies! Great insights, I saw that variant recommended a bunch but couldn't imagine those consequences
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