Get ready for the very best of the best preschool card games! When my little ones get to be about 3 or so, they get to start joining in on some of the board game and card game fun that happens around here (oh yes, it’s a wild home we have, friends!).
I really do love card games for preschoolers. They can be SO full of learning. Preschoolers can learn about taking turns, playing fair, being a good sport, and honesty. They can also learn some numeracy and literacy skills—all through the power of play.
I wrote a post a little while ago about a great card game to play with preschoolers that works on loads of math skills. You can find that post right here: Teaching Math to Preschoolers with Playing Cards!
Today I wanted to share with you a card game that will have your little three-year-old (or four-year-old, or any age for that matter) learning their letters and sounds by playing ABC Go Fish!
I have shared with you before the order I recommend for teaching children their letters. We play this game using those groupings of letters.
The first grouping of letters that we teach is our child’s name letters. So, if we were working on learning name letters, we would play ABC Go Fish with those letters.
The second group of letters is: s, a, t, i, p, and n. So, if we were working on the second group of letters, those are the letters we would play with. I’m really not sure why I called this game ABC Go Fish, because there isn’t an ABC in sight!
Wondering about the rest of those letter groupings? Grab your FREE Teaching Letter Recognition Guide that includes the special groupings of letters, why we teach them this way, and some awesome activities to practice letters and sounds right here:
My nephew Carter now knows all of his name letters—woohoo! He knows the lowercase letters, can match the uppercase letters to the lowercase version, and knows the sounds they make as well. So now, we move on to the letters: s, a, t, i, p, and n.
Those are the letters we used for this game of ABC Go Fish.
To prep, I cut a piece of paper into squares. I wrote one letter on each square of paper, writing two of each letter. So we had 2 ‘s’ squares, 2 ‘a’ squares, etc.
To make this a little bit simpler, and for the opportunity to offer a clue if needed, I chose to write each letter in a different colour. This way, if Carter could not recall what a “p” looked like, I could tell him that it was an orange letter.
The rules are very, very simple—as all preschool card games need to be:
Shuffle the cards and deal three cards to your preschooler and three to yourself.
Take turns asking, “Do you have a…” and select a letter from your hand to ask.
If a pair is found, lay those cards down.
The game is done when all the cards are paired up!
I like using only three cards at first, as it makes it much more manageable for preschoolers. The cards are a bit tricky to hold, so you could open a hardcover book on the floor and lay the cards down on the floor behind the open book.
This card game is so easy to play and loads of fun. It is a wonderful beginner card game for preschoolers and a fabulous way to practice letters.
Think of all of the “Go Fish” versions we could create:
- sight words
- numbers
- addition questions matched with sums
- subtraction questions matched with sums
- compound words (“sand” would match with “wich”)
- capital cities
I can see this card game being a weekly feature in our homeschool!
I hope you are having a lovely day. Thank you so much for reading, my friends!
xo
Sarah
P.S. Don’t forget to grab your FREE Teaching Letter Recognition Guide!
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