Skyjo is a card game that a student introduced to me this year. It quickly became one of my favorites, as well as a favorite of most of my students! This third grade group asked to play it every time we met for weeks, but my middle school groups enjoyed it just as much. I also know adults who play it at home for game night fun! It is now one of my top recommended games for families to buy.
One of the things I like about Skyjo is that it is easy to learn, quick to set up, and played in fast paced rounds. This means we can easily squeeze in a round or two if we just have a few minutes, or the kids can play longer games with multiple rounds. It’s just as fun with 2 players or 8.
The objective of the game is to have the lowest point total once all the cards are flipped. There is a combination of luck and strategy as you choose which cards to flip and exchange. But what I really love is the mental calculations as I noticed most kids are constantly adding and comparing their scores throughout the game!
Players have 12 cards with numbers ranging from -2 to 12. This means they are not only developing strategies for mentally adding lists of numbers, but developing a natural understanding of what it means to add negative numbers! Then as we do final calculations we also compare scores. I use this to emphasize the idea that subtraction means finding the difference between two numbers and can be accomplished by counting up!
