More Than One Way to Uno

We talk about how to emphasize mathematical thinking in the normal game of Uno on our Game page. However, the official game of Uno can get repetitive if played too many times so it can be fun to find different ways to use the cards.

One fun way to use the cards in the deck is to match them based on their similarities. Give the child(ren) a stack of cards and ask them to put the cards into categories. See if your child can create categories on their own and if they need prompting, suggest numbers or colors. The more cards they need to sort before their next activity, the more automatic their ability to distinguish will be.

Another way to use Uno cards would be to have your child(ren) put all of the cards of one color into number order, increasing or decreasing. You can also ask your child to put the cards in a pattern and see what patterns they see in the cards. For even more math fun, children could add, subtract, multiply, or divide the quantities when 2 numbers are pulled from the deck.