Our little girl (7 years old) has been wandering around Effy’s workshop since… forever. So, as half the world is confined home, here’s a series of tricks that can come up handy to keep our little ones engaged, creative and busy.
Create your own card extension!
There’s only so many rounds of the same card game that one can do before feeling slightly accustomed and eventually bored. That’s when an extension comes handy to extend their lifespan. To shoot two birds with one stone, having your little one create extension cards to her/his favorite card game helps develop creativity & autonomy while providing new fun. In a nutshell:
- easy (from 3 yo+)
- mild to no adult supervision (beware card cutting)
- 30~60 minutes to create // endless hours playing with newly created cards
- drawing material (pencils, paint, paper, cards, scissors…)
Step 1: Identify the card game to create an extension for.
An easy way to have your little ones engaged in the activity: simply ask them the game they want to create card for. Ideally, a game with some degree of flexibility so that drawings are not too standard. Domino, seven families, flash memory cards, tarot or even mistigri are all suitable picks.
Step 2: Prepare the material.
Drawing material and desk aside, beware cards back and card size. They must be close (if not identical) to the original card game it is based on. If not, and in order to still keep the fun going, make enough cards so that the new deck can get in the old one without giving away cards content.
Step 3: Start drawing!
We usually do the first ones together with her, before leaving her on her own to do as many as she wants.
Step 4: Play!
And now some examples below, based on our daughter’s favorites:
– Seven Families (or 7 Familles). The game consists of completing the most families by guessing other players’ cards. So we created new families based on her favorites heroes, including Tintin, Dad, Journey to the West, Balala the Fairies, Studio Dance, Asterix (she’s half Chinese half french after all)…
Tintin walking on the moon 
Balala Fairies magical fight 
Dad and daughters playing Uno 
Journey to the West above clouds 
Studio Danse’s Carla throwing banana peels
– Parent Epuise (official website in french for reference). Each player randomly picks up a card from the deck and must do the task mentioned. Our daughter had fun imagining new tasks associated to animals she draw.
– Dixit (official website for reference). Each card is inspire players to state and guess its theme. So illustrations could be as abstract as she wanted to.
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