Presidents Mat Game

This was one of the easiest games I have ever made.  I bought two Melissa & Doug Presidents Write-a-Mat ($2.99 each at the local teachers store - however, I got a great deal on them as they were going out of business.)

I cut the Presidents apart on one of the mats.

We use the other mat as the playing board. The cut-up cards are placed in a bucket (here we just used a plastic butter tub).

 In turn a player draws one of the cards,

 

 reads the name of the President,

   and finds the match on the playing board.

 He then places one of his colored chip markers on the space.

 SCORING:

 We began thinking that we would play until one player had three in a row. However, I scored three (blue) together quite quickly and we wanted to continue. So we decided to see if it is possible to get 4, 5 or even 6 in a row. We would play until all the cards had been matched.

 Here Douglas (red) scores 4 in a row.

Here is how our final board looked. 

We decided a good scoring would be 3 points for every 3-in-a-row, 4 for each 4-in-a-row, and so on. Douglas ended up the winner by a couple points. 

This is a good game for becoming familiar with the Presidents and their order. It is slow-paced so it allows for comments, questions, and teaching. The winner is simply a matter of the luck of the draw, so the adult has no advantage over a child.