Horses Mat & Cards Game

This is an extremely easy game to make. It is not as inexpensive as most games I create. However, it is so perfect for my horse-loving granddaughter Diana.

I bought two of these mats from a local learning store. These are also available on Amazon. These mats are heavily laminated so they are very durable. I cut the horses apart using a paper cutter. Both sides lined up perfectly so the backside cards can also be used. The back side is black & white. 

We use the other mat as the playing board. The cut-up cards are placed in a draw pile. 

Even though there are black and white pictures on the back of the cards, they do not match what is on the front. We could do like we did on our Presidents Mat Game and use a bucket to hold the cards to be drawn.

These would be the fronts of the cards that we would be using so the cards would be flipped over so players could not see the horse being drawn.

In turn a player draws one of the cards, and reads the name of the horse. She finds the matching picture on the mat board and places one of her colored chips on the space. Standard poker chips are just a perfect size for this. 

The matching pictures are easy to find as the horses on the mat are in alphabetical order which gave Diana another skill to practice as she played. (Grandma loves it when I can sneak a second skill in and no one even notices. Of course this was not something I planned, it just worked out because of the way the mat was made.)

We decided to see who could be the first to get three in a row vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. It happened quickly so we didn't declare a winner, we just continued playing. When we finally had our board filled we looked over each row and stated who had how many in a row. So there was no emphasis on a winner (which is good, because then there must be a loser and Diana does not lose well). 

So we had a lot of fun and she wanted to play again. She has continued to get out the game and want to play some more. We are both getting more familiar with these horses.

Time for a variation of play:

For this variation of play the black & white sides are going to be considered the front of the cards, These would be flipped over so this side was not showing. 

So we decided to use the black & white side of the cards which do not contain the names of the horses. We had to look very carefully at the pictures to make the matches, some are quite similar. 

We will be looking for other ways to play and use the mat and cards. But for now, she loves this game.

Special Bonus: Time alone with Grandma which makes us both happy.