There are a multitude of online games out there for your younger child. Some of them are ones that you should actually encourage your child to play. Yes, encourage your child to play games. What a concept! There are games out there on the Internet that will teach your child a multitude of useful, meaningful concepts.
The card games that are online are some that you might have played as a child (but not on the computer)! These are Card Matching Game, Memory Trial and Solitaire.
Card Matching Game starts with cards face down. You have the entire deck of cards facing down. This might be too challenging for a 3 or 4 years old, but above that has the attention span to complete this game. Your child will have to match pairs of cards by turning over matched pairs. Clicking on one of the cards will turn it over. If the next card that the child clicks on matches the first card, they disappear from the screen. The child must clear the board with as little tries as possible. This game takes awhile, especially if the child does not remember the cards previously turned over. This game enhances the memory and trains the eye to recognize same and different.
Another card game is Card Memory Trial. This card games is suited for the younger child in the group of 3 to 10 years. As the child ages, this games may become too easy. Again the child has to match pairs of cards by turning over matched pairs. Clicking on the card will flip it over. If the next card the child clicks matches the previous one, then both of the cards disappear. If they do not match, as you are clicking on the third card, both of the previous cards disappear. In this game, there are fewer cards to match than the previous game and they are symbols instead of numbers and letters in suits. The fewer moves the child makes, the higher he or she will score. The score with the least amount of tries (or click) is the best score. The cards are randomly mixed so that no one has an advantage of memorizing where the cards are.
Solitaire is just that, you probably have played this game many times. The difference with this online game is that there is absolutely no cheating! The rules are the same. The cards are laid out the same way as you would lay them out when playing with actual cards. The object of Solitaire is to use all the cards in the deck to gradually build up all four suits in the card deck in stacks beginning with the aces and ending with the Kings.
After the deck has been dealt, the child will double click on all Aces so that they may be moved to the top right of the board. That is where the challenge comes in. Sometimes your Aces are deep in the deck or buried under one of the seven columns of cards. Once he or she gets all of the Aces on the upper right portion, it will get easier.
After either placing the Aces up on the right upper side or moving the cards from one pile to another, the child will then start to click the deck to begin turning over cards.
The card that is face up on the deck is always available for play. But that does not mean it will play. The child must start building on the columns so that more cards can be played from the deck. The child will only be building up their column stacks in order to free up cards that they will use to build the suits. This can be a very challenging game and will be much too hard for the normal 3 to 6 year old. Most of the time, there is no winner! It is very hard to get all the cards in the four suits on the upper right. This will teach your child how to count, recognize suits, and to strategically remove some cards to make other cards more readily available.
Most every card game teaches a skill. As a parent, you must look at the game to determine if your child has the patience and the skills to perform what it is asking. Nothing is more frustrating to a child than not knowing how the game is played.
