3 year old card games: 15 games for 3-year-olds to play with others
15 games for 3-year-olds to play with others
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The best games for 3-year-olds teach social skills, logic and reasoning. So grab one of these board games or head outdoors and have fun playing together.
By 3 years old, little ones have graduated from the side-by-side parallel play of younger toddlers and are ready to start really playing with others. Some games may still be beyond his abilities, but there’s no shortage of great games for 3-year-olds that teach hand-eye coordination and important cooperative skills.
Susan Heim, co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul: New Moms,” says, “At the age of 3, your child achieves many cognitive milestones, such as recognizing colors, shapes and common elements. Your child also matures physically, becoming better coordinated when it comes to kicking, throwing and climbing. ”
Here are several games to play with 3-year-old kids:
Board games for 3-year-olds
- Candy Land
Pick a card and follow the instructions as you race through the Gumdrop Mountains, the Peppermint Stick Forest and other yummy lands to Home Sweet Home.
- Chutes and Ladders
This game rewards good deeds with a ladder climb, but you’ll slide down a chute if you land on the wrong spot. Spin the spinner and move your child-shaped game piece the number of squares on the spinner. The first player to 100 wins.
- Hungry Hungry Hippos
Start a feeding frenzy when you release the marbles into the game base. Your little one will learn to move her hippo quickly to chomp the marbles. The hippo who chomps the golden marble wins.
- Elefun
Players catch butterflies with nets when the elephant’s trunk shoots them into the air. The player with the most butterflies wins.
- Don’t Break the Ice
Tap out the ice blocks one at a time, but keep the polar bear on top of the ice. If you break the ice, the polar bear plops.
- Cootie
Mix and match bug parts to create your own Cootie bug. The first player to complete his bug wins.
- HiHo! Cherry-O
Players take turns picking apples, cherries and blueberries from their trees to fill their baskets. The first player with an empty tree wins.
- The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game!
Players spin the spinner, use their Squirrel Squeezers to pick up the matching colored acorn and place it into the log. The first player to fill their log with acorns wins.
Card games for 3-year-olds
- Classic Card Games
Card games like Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Old Maid and Monster Match (or all four!) are perfect for older toddlers. Players learn to take turns, ask for cards to make sets, draw and discard, find matches and more. Monster Match and other matching games “help little ones find items that are alike by recognizing details and common features,” Heim says.
- War
Played with a standard playing card deck, War teaches numbers and counting. Each player turns a card over at the same time. The player with the highest number gets both cards. War is declared when two players have the same rank — they flip over another pair of cards, and the player with the highest number gets all four. The game ends when one player collects the whole deck.
Monster Match and other matching games “help little ones find items that are alike by recognizing details and common features,” Heim says.Active games for 3-year-olds
Active games for 3-year-olds are not only important for their development, but, according to Heim, “Active group play lowers the risk of obesity and helps children learn how to get along with others, settle conflicts and win and lose gracefully.”
According to Janis Meredith, sports mom and author of the “Sports Parenting Survival Guide” series, “Interacting with other kids helps children learn to settle differences.
” She adds that, “Playing together outdoors helps kids physically, socially and mentally.”
- Twister
This game “teaches little ones about the parts of the body and helps them to learn colors,” says Heim. Players put hands and feet on different colored circles without falling. Create a DIY version with spray paint in your yard.
- Kickball
Help your tyke develop gross motor skills! Your little one will learn to wait for the ball, run fast and tag each base on the way to home plate.
- Don’t Drop the Ball
To play this easy DIY game, “Have players place a bounce ball on a spoon and race from one end of the room to the other without dropping the ball,” suggests Heim. “An age-appropriate T-ball set or golf game is also terrific for developing coordination.”
- Bowling
This DIY game makes bowling easy for 3-year-olds. Set up plastic cups in your hallway and use a tennis ball to bowl the pins down. Take turns and count the total pins bowled. First player to reach 25 wins.
- Scavenger Hunt
There are lots of fun ways to adapt the classic scavenger hunt. For 3-year-olds, draw five to seven pictures on your list instead of words. Limit your play area to one room indoors or a small area outdoors to keep your little one’s attention. Use a crayon to circle each picture. The first one to find all of the items wins.
Take turns and count the total pins bowled. First player to reach 25 wins.Like what you’re reading?
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4 Simple Card Games – Busy Toddler
Busy Toddler » Play » Game Time » 4 Simple Card Games
Author: Susie
Four card games to play with your child that are super simple.
Don’t worry, this isn’t “how to teach your child solitaire” or “toddler’s first Bridge game”. I promise. Adjust your meaning of the term “card game” down to a toddler level and now we’re talking. We’re talking super simple card games.
Playing cards were a supply I used all.
the.time in my kindergarten classroom (BK – before kids). It’s way more fun to show a playing card #5 plus a playing card #2 than just writing 5+2 on a piece of paper. Playing cards are little pieces of laminated magic. Trust me. They’re instant math fun.
Materials:
(this list contains affiliate links)
- Deck of cards
I haven’t used playing cards before in an activity with toddler so this was a brand new project supply for us to play with. It was a hit. We sat together for about 20 minutes (twenty minutes!!!) playing with our cards. Definitely wasn’t an independent, “I can unload the dishwasher while supervising him” kind of activity, but it had so much learning in it that I had to share.
During our 20 minute card-fest party, I came up with 4 super simple card games to share with you (remember the term game is being used rather loosely here).
Just seeing the cards was an “oooooh, aaaaah” moment for him.
We started by inspecting them and I showed him the different suits and colors. He was hooked. The buy-in factor was totally there for this activity.
Game 1: Simple Sorting.
I pulled out 3 cards from each suit (12 cards total) and laid them face up for my 2.5 year old toddler. I put a red card on the left and a black one on the right and simply asked him to sort the cards by color. Simple enough, a great “ice breaker” activity for our first game with the playing cards. Sorting is such an important math skill so he’s learning tons here classifying by color.
Game 2: Make a Match.
I took the 12 cards from the sorting activity and paired them down to just six. This time, he needed to flip the cards over to find matching suits. We did this in the same vein as Memory, but think toddler memory so mostly just flipping over random cards until we found two diamonds, two hearts, and two spades. I don’t know why the clubs didn’t get to play here – apparently they were in time out or something.
Game 3: 52 card pick up.
I’m not kidding in the least. I’m 100% serious that we did this. I let him throw the whole set around. Obviously, parameters and guidelines were given, but I let him go for it. He threw them up, he made it rain, he did what every little kid wants to do with a stack of card. And then he’d scoop them all up and do it again. Actually, it was a nice little gross motor skills intermission during our card play with his jumping and dancing here.
Game 4: Guess and Sort.
Once things simmered down from our 52 card pick up, we worked together to turn every card upside down. Then, we started a pile of black and a pile of red at opposite ends of the massive upside down pile of cards. He’d touch a card, guess red or black, flip to reveal and insert toddler giggles here. Didn’t matter if he was right or wrong, he loved every minute of the anticipation and flipping the cards over. A perfect way to end our card play!
Ok so maybe he isn’t moments away from learning Cribbage, but he is starting to see the fun and value of playing cards and Future Me is thrilled about that.