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Go Fish Rules For Kids

Written by Debbie Brown | June 23, 2022

This article will give you Go Fish Rules for Kids. Go Fish is one of the first card games kids learn to play. It’s an easy game to learn. The mystery of guessing what cards the other players are holding makes it that much more fun.

Games like this offer many other benefits, in addition to the fun. They teach children to follow directions, improve thinking and memory skills, and teach good sportsmanship whether the child wins or loses. Go Fish in particular helps children practice number sense – number recognition, counting, and the concepts of number sets.

A fish in the ocean

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Go Fish Rules for Kids

How to play Go Fish step by step.

  1. Deal five cards to each player. Be Careful not to let anyone see your cards.
  2. Put down any match cards you have in your hand, in pairs of two, face up.
  3. Spread the rest of the cards out in a pile as “the fish pond.”
  4. Each player takes turns asking another player for a specific card that matches one of the cards in their hand. The youngest player goes first.
  5. If the player asked has that card, they hand it to the player who asked for it. If they have more than one they had over all of them.
A cartoon of 2 boys playing go fish
  1. If they don’t have any of those cards they say, “Go fish.”
  2. The player would then take a card from the “fish pile”. If the player draws the card they ask for, they get another turn. If not, it’s the next person’s turn.
A cartoon picture of two boys playing cards
  1. The game ends when the last match set is made.
  2. All the players count up their sets and the one with the most sets is the winner.

Go Fish Cards for Kids

While this game can easily be played with a regular deck of cards, you might want a more kid-friendly set of Go Fish Cards. I like Go Fish Untamed Ocean cards because children can play by matching numbers or by matching ocean animals.

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DEBBIE BROWN | Owner and Curriculum Designer

Hi! I’m Debbie Brown. I created Tothood 101 because I’m passionate about sharing preschool activity ideas, and resources that I’ve gleaned from my 20+ years of experience teaching preschoolers at home and in the classroom. My goal is to encourage, guide, and help inspire you to make learning SUPER FUN for your preschooler at home! Check out the ABOUT page to learn more.

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