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Playing together as a family does not need to be an elaborate event – involving a lot of planning or cost a lot of money. The real joy comes from spending quality time and bonding as a family for a few hours every day, just having fun together.

A common family tradition is playing card games which is cheap and simple to involve everyone from ages 3+.

Specialised card decks cost less than $5 and can be purchased online or in toy stores. If you don’t have specialised card decks, you can still play using a standard 52-card deck lying around the house. Best of all, card games be taken along with you to play when you’re travelling on the road.

UNO
First launched in 1971, UNO is a classic game. Simple and easy with a few rules, this game can be played with just 2 players. During the game, players must either draw or play a card, where the winner is the one who gets rid of his/her cards first.

Widely enjoyed by families across different cultures, there have been new variations of the game such as UNO Attack where a machine (card launcher) dispenses the cards. At every turn, a player will need to press the card launcher to get a new card, none or a pile of cards, depending on his/her luck, making the game more exciting.

Using a standard deck, you can assign special functions to the J, Q and K cards. For example, J – SKIP, Q – REVERSE, K – Draw 4 cards, Joker – Wild card

SNAP
Snap is another classic card game that kids love. With a specialised deck, the game helps kids to observe and recognise similar cards and react quickly.

Each player gets a stack of cards faced down and starts flipping the top of the deck, one at a time. When two similar cards appear (e.g. 2 dogs if you use a specialised card deck or 2 fives/queens if you use a normal poker deck), players call out “Snap!”. The first player who does this, gets both decks of the face-up piles and the winner of the game is the one with the most cards.

The game can be played with 2 to 6 players. With more than 6 players, the game gets a bit messy and less likely for pairs to turn up.

MEMORY GAME
You will need some space for this game (to lay out the cards) although there are lesser rules in the Memory Card Game. Shuffle an even number of cards and lay them face-down on the floor or on a table, in a grid. Players will need to flip 2 cards at each turn to find pairs, with the winner the one with the most pairs.