Fun Games to Play with Cards: The Best Indoor Energy Busters!

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Grab a pack of cards for a simple indoor energy buster and some fun games to play with cards, shared by our contributor Alisha, to get kids moving and learning!

My kids can play outside forever, but sometimes we’re just stuck inside. When that happens, I turn to a quick, no-prep indoor energy buster card game that’s so simple to put together on the fly!

What to do with cards when you’re bored?

Card games are such a fun way to engage with your children, but sometimes they need to move.

This activity twist on the classic card game of War will get your kids moving and having fun.

Check out this card counting math game for more hands on fun!

To play this fun card game to get moving, you’ll need:

• Standard 52-Card Deck
• Piece of Paper
• Pen or Pencil

This is a 2+ player card game. There’s really no limit to how many players, if you start to get a lot, you may want to add in a second deck of cards.

This is an easy card game to play with a group of kids, or when you’re at home entertaining just your 3 year old.

Ready, Set, Play & Move Indoors Together with a Deck of Cards

Before you get moving and playing the game, set up a simple guide, a legend for what to do with the playing cards.

Draw out the shape of each suit of cards: heart, diamond, spade, clubs.

Decide on a movement that each of these suits will represent.

Count and sort cards with a simple DIY game for kids!

We decided on these movements:

• Hearts = hop
• Spades = squats
• Clubs = toe-touches
• Diamonds = jumping jacks

When picking the movements, thing about the space you have to make sure they’ll fit where you’ll be playing, and movements your kids enjoy and that they can do successfully.

Decide on the value of face cards. We decided on:

• Ace = 1
• Jack = 11
• Queen = 12
• King = 13

These are the standard values given to these cards during other games. But if you wanted to avoid confusion, simply leave them out of the pack for this game.

Ready to Play, Move & Learn with this Crazy Fun Game to Place with a Deck of Cards?

This card game follows the same rules as the game of War, just with some movements added in.

1. Remove the Jokers (and face cards if desired) from a standard deck of cards and divide the deck evenly between all players
2. Everyone flips over just the top card from their deck at the same time
3. Highest card (their face value) wins! Winner claims all lower value cards
4. Two “highest” cards: each player sets out two additional cards, one face down and one face up; highest face-up card wins all played cards; repeat until one player is higher
5. The object of the game is to be the first player to win all 52 cards

Play another card game with a learning twist for even more fun!

Adding Movement to this Classic Card Game

Now for the twist. The person (or people, if playing with more than two players) with the lowest cards have to pay a penalty.

Remember those movements?

Everyone except the “winner” of each hand will need to do the move that matches the suit on their card. How many reps they do of the move is determined by the rank of the card played.

For example:

• 3 of hearts = 3 hops
• 4 of spades = 4 squats
• 7 of clubs = 7 toe-touches
• 5 of diamonds = 5 jumps

When two players go face-to-face in a “war,” only the loser of that contest has to do the penalty moves. Everyone else gets a free pass!

Other Fun Games to Play with Cards (& Burn Off Energy!)

The best part of this simple game is that it’s endlessly adaptable.

Try these fun twists on your indoor energy buster card game:

• Pick 5-10 cards and do just those moves
• Scatter cards around the house and challenge your kids to hunt them, doing the moves along the way
• Do 52-card pickup, doing each move as they gather up the deck
• Go through the whole deck, flipping over one card at a time for each kid instead of competing against each other
• Use the card movements as a fun energy busting break with other activities, like homework or chores
• Work on math skills and set out two cards of the same suit, add or subtract and do the number of moves in the answer
• Group the cards by value, then do the moves for each card of each value (1 squat, 1 jump, 1 hop, 1 toe touch; 2 jumps, 2 squats, 2 hops, 2 toe touches, etc.)

What other movement variations can you think of on fun classic games of cards?

You could try these movements with a game of Uno!

• Assign movements to the colors of the Uno cards.
• Every time a person has to draw from the pile, they have to do the movement assigned to the card face up in the discard pile.
• If there’s a wild card laid, the next player has to do the movement on the next card that is played.

What about Go Fish? Could you add some movement to that classic game for kids?

Some of our favorite classic starter card games, are ones that don’t have a trump suit, not a trick-taking game, like Euchre, Poker, Gin Rummy, Whist, or anything like that.

But simple ones like Old Maid, Slapjack, Crazy Eights, War, Kings on the Corner, Golf.

This simple indoor energy buster card game is sure to get out that extra energy in a fun and exciting way!

How do you burn energy when your kids are stuck inside all day? We’d love to check out your creative ideas!