I love it when I can combine school and fun.  Recently I discovered a new twist to a game of War.  This is a game for two where each person turns over a card, and whoever has the higher card keeps both of the cards.  You keep repeating until all your cards are gone. It think this is an excellent game for the little ones because it teaches them which number is higher.  However, my 7.5 year old is way beyond this game.  To make it more exciting and challenging, I have each player turn over TWO cards and multiple the two numbers.  Whoever has the higher number gets to keep all the cards.  We keep playing until we run out of our initial pile of cards.

To keep it even more interesting, we count up all the cards.  This is great because he now gets to do addition.  I have my boy lay all of his cards on the table, face up.  He is to look for cards that have sums of 10 or 20.  Once he locates a set, we can quickly add the numbers together.  After he adds up his pile of cards, he gets to help me add up my pile.  We then record the score on a piece of paper.

To keep the game going, we go for another round or two or three or till we drop.  After round two, we add the second round score to the first round to get a new total.  Next, we go for another round and then add the new score to our previous sum.  We keep repeating this process until we reached a previously agreed number of rounds.  Now, whoever gets the higher number after all the rounds WINS!  My kid loves this game and so do I.

I love the fact that he gets to do multiplication and addition (both double and triple digit addition) at the same time.

We use all the cards except the Joker card.  Ace is equal to one, Jack is 11, Queen and King are both 12.