This book has been designed to complement our bestselling School Friendly Cards. Designed to help young children learn key early number concepts while playing simple card games, this book will give you plenty of ideas to use School Friendly Playing Cards for a wide range of mathematical activities.

Playing cards is a popular pastime for children and adults alike. Young children enjoy playing card games but sometimes are confused by all of the extraneous information depicted on a standard playing card. They sometimes have difficulty remembering the difference between clubs and spades – if they can even remember their names! They may not remember whether a Jack is of higher value than a Queen or King. Are Aces higher (11) or (1)? When using cards to develop fluency in mathematics, these issues can prove a distraction and irritation.

One aspect of cards that often confuses young children is that on a 7 of diamonds there are in fact 9 diamonds. Look closely and you will see that there are 7 diamonds and the one diamond under each seven. The other issue is that young children begin to believe that there is a mathematical shape called a diamond, when in fact it is a rhombus or perhaps a square that has been rotated. Granted there are baseball diamonds and diamonds as a suit on playing cards, but a diamond shape is actually rhombus (or possibly a rotated square).

In some cultures and schools the use of regular playing cards is frowned upon because of their association with gambling. Hence the development of the Child Friendly Cards.