"I DE-CLARE-WAR!" KIDS CARD FUN!

Please tell me you remember the card game called "I Declare War" from back in the day? Does anyone still actually play this game any more? Not only was this game a great, simple, innocent, fun game to play between friends, but we've discovered many educational reasons to pass on this traditional ole' game to our home schoolers, AND even better reasons we created our own deck!

The "I Declare War" game used to be an intense engagement in our family back then. It was during the time when tv was limited, tv stations "went off" certain hours of the night, stores were closed after 5 pm weekdays and all day on Sundays, there were no VCR's or cd's, let alone iPods and iPhones… ​
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Wait… I don’t want you to get the impression that we are ancient around here! :)

The game of “war” was an innocent card game played with a whole deck of regular cards between two people. The "dealer" passed out all the cards, alternating between the two, thus dividing the deck in half. Each person turned over one of his cards from the top of his stack simultaneously. Whoever had the highest card won both cards on that play. Continue playing by each person simultaneously turning over one card at a time until the end of the stack was reached.

War was only “declared” when both players happened to play the same number or face card at the same time. How do you “win” a war? By playing three cards each, followed by a fourth card to settle the dispute. Whoever had the higher card on the fourth card won the whole pile of cards.

The fun part is when you “declare war,” as you turn over each of your three cards, both players generally say in unison, one syllable per card, “I-DE-CLARE-WAR!” It was a lot of simple indoor fun on those burning hot southern summer or rainy days.

Well, in our homeschool, we decided to turn it up a notch by creating our own batch of numbered cards, from 1 to 100! We chose to create these cards for several reasons.

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1. We practiced counting from 1 to 100 using these cards in our preschool days.
2. We learned to count by sets - by 2’s, 3’s, etc, and by 10’s, 20’s, etc.
3. We learned to visually recognize numbers 1 to 100.
4. We learned to count in Spanish using the same homemade deck.
5. When we got older, we learned greater than, less than, equal numbers.
6. We practiced adding and subtracting smaller, then larger numbers.
7. We even practiced simple competition - learning to win and lose.
8. In order to "declare war" with our set of cards and to build on number recognition and value, whenever each player turned over a card that ended with the same number, we had to settle the score.​

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To top if off, we also played regular “I DE-CLARE WAR” with our very own set of numbered cards.

All we did was fold down several sheets of heavy card stock and cut out 100 rectangles. Then we used a thick black Sharpie - our most FAVORITE art utensil ever created - and wrote one number per card from 1 to 100. (See the article about our love of Sharpie’s here, and our featured Item of the Week here).
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After all the numbers were written on one side of each card, from 1 to 100, we used a rubber stamp of a puppy to print on the back of each card. This way, we knew which side was up or down (for 6's and 9's). We also underlined all the cards for added clarification. We STILL use our cards when we’re looking to change up the pace a bit.

We hope you'll decide to create this simple yet educational and fun project in your homeschool. It will be worth every moment and make great memories in the process. Be sure to check back and let us know how it turned out, and other ways you use your personalized deck of numbered cards.
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"A mind once stretched by new ideas never regains its original dimensions."
Anonymous

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