Play Plan : Collaborative Sorting

General Information

• Card deck: Children’s cards or standard cards (as per the child’s play level)
• Prerequisites: Counting, number recognition, identifying suits
• Play arena: Standard
• Number of players: 4

Game Overview and Basic Rules for Play

The objective of the game is to collect all cards of the same type (suit). One child is then asked to distribute the entire card pack equally among the four children. Then out of the 4 children in the group, 1 is assigned diamonds, another hearts, one club and the last spades. The players are provided one turn to ask for a missing card in their suite. The game ends when each child has collected all the cards (ace to 10) of the suite they had been assigned.

Play Session Plans:

Session 1:

• Before the session: Take Junior cards and remove all the Jokers, King, Queen and Jack from the pack.
• Children are grouped into 4 and will be seated as per the standard arena.
• Introduce all 4 different suits Diamond, Club, Heart and Spade to the children.
• Then give one particular suit to each of them from ace to 10 which are shuffled.Keep those cards on each of their respective slots given in an arena.
• Then they have to count and identify the number on the card, through Braille or by counting the tactile dots on the cards.
• Let them arrange all the cards in an order.
• So, by the end of session 1, they should be able to arrange the cards based on the numbers and have to identify which particular suit they got.

Session 2:

• Use the same junior cards. let one of the children distribute equally among all 4 children in the arena.
• Then explain to the children that they have to collect all cards of the same type (or suite).
• Assign a child for each suit such that, out of the 4 children in the group, 1 is assigned diamonds, another hearts, one club and the last spades.
• The children are provided one turn to ask for a missing card in their suite. The child who has the card hands it over to the child who had asked, and that child now asks for a card that he/she doesn’t have.
• The game continues till the first child makes all the numbers (1-10) in the particular suit. Who is the winner and the game continues.
• The game ends when each child has collected all the cards (ace to 10) of the suite they had been assigned.
• If they have a card another person is asking for, it is mandatory for them to hand it over.
• Then after getting all the cards of the same suit, they need to arrange the cards in an ascending order.

Session 3: 

• In this session, use the standard cards and also introduce king, queen and jack.
• So, in addition to these 3 cards. Follow the same instructions there in session 2 and play with the children.

Session 4:

• The game can be modified such that each child collects 5 cards of a particular suite (either 1-5 or 6-10).
• One of the participants will distribute 5 cards to each of them. Let all 4 of them select a particular suit that they have to collect.
• Then each of them will get their turns to pick from and discard the cards from the respective slots of the board which is kept in the centre.
• Whoever collects all 5 cards of the same suit will win the game. I.e. they can have either hearts from 1 to 5 or 3 to 8 or 6 to 10 etc.