How Much Challenge is Enough Challenge?

Getting children to play pairs (matching one card to another) is a great way of improving their memory skills and strategic thinking. But how many cards should you start with when playing the game with nursery children? Most foundation stage teachers tell me 8 cards (4 pairs) or thereabouts.

So, what about starting with 20 cards and playing the game with 3-year-olds? Way too many, I hear you say and last week I would've agreed with you. But not now: during half-term, my 2
½ year old daughter and I downloaded Animatch, a game of pairs for the iPhone that comes with 20 cards as standard. Thinking this is too many for Ava to deal with, we simply listened to the sounds that each animal makes and names the creatures as we went along.

However, within 10 minutes of playing around with the programme, Ava had worked out the object of the game and was merrily matching the cards to their pairs. Her initial strategy was to pick one animal and then keep going until she'd found it's pair before moving onto another animal. She soon realised that this is an inefficient strategy and so moved on to working out what was under each card and matching as she went along. It now takes her 90 seconds to complete the game without the need of any guidance or encouragement.

I wonder where I can find a game with 40 cards to match...?! JN