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.
This post contains affiliate links. For more information please read my full disclosure.
Go Fish Rules for Kids
How to play Go Fish step by step.
- Deal five cards to each player. Be Careful not to let anyone see your cards.
- Put down any match cards you have in your hand, in pairs of two, face up.
- Spread the rest of the cards out in a pile as “the fish pond.”
- 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.
- 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.
- If they don’t have any of those cards they say, “Go fish.”
- 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.
- The game ends when the last match set is made.
- 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.
Be sure to also check out:
