Key Early Literacy Skill(s): Numeracy

To get this activity off the ground, grab a standard deck of playing cards and some tape. Then, find a large flat surface which you can use the tape on. Perhaps a wall, door, or even a back of a couch might work! From of the deck of cards, we will only need the numbered cards (from 2 through 10) from each suit (hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds). You should have a total of 36 cards. We did not include aces to avoid confusion because A is not a number, although you can include it in lieu of "1" if you would like! Once you have your deck narrowed down, pick one card to represent each of the numbers and use tape to attach the cards to the surface. If you are not including aces, you should have nine cards taped to the surface. If you are including aces, you should have ten cards taped to the surface. We made small little tape rolls for the backs of each card, so that the tape is fully concealed. You can also put a little roll of tape on the back of the cards not attached to the surface, so they are ready to be stuck onto the cards already on the surface. Now, ask your little one to match all of the free cards with those on the surface! Once they've found a match, they can slap the free card on top of the original card on the surface! They can keep going until they've stacked all of the cards of the same number on the surface! For even more fun, instead of using a surface, you could tape the cards to items all over your house and have a number scavenger hunt. What's more, if you have multiple preschoolers in the house, they could race to see who can get rid of their group of nine or ten cards the fastest, or they can work together to get all the cards on the surface!