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The Brown Bag Teacher

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Teacher Hack: Pool-Noodle Card Holders

Hello friends! If you are a regular reader, you know we love games in our classroom – especially card games. It’s the perfect opportunity to practice core math and reading skills under the pretense of fun! 🙂 With my 1st graders, the struggle of handling the playing cards is REAL. Most of the time, the cards are too big or too many for our little hands, so we have to turn around and lay our cards on the floor. Then, students spin around to face their partner when they are ready to make a play. This means that we can spend more time getting ready to play than practicing our learning skills – ha! So, today I wanted to share with you an easy solution to make cards more manageable.

The supplies are simple – a cutting board, a smooth knife (if you use a serrated one, you’ll have blue noodle-foam everywhere), and a pool noodle.

I cut the pool noodle into 1-2 inch segments. You could pre-meausre the holders, but I just eye-balled it.

Then, after you’ve cut your holders, you need to cut the slit in each holder. I cut all around the circle down about 3/4 inch. It’s enough so cards can fit, but not so much that the noodle will fall apart. I cut a 360-degree slit so students don’t have to worry about holding the correct side of the card holder.

Before using the card holders, you will need to teach students how to fan cards. I always teach them to put one card in and place the rest of the cards on top. Then, swipe.

With 1 pool noodle I was able to make 50 card holders. Enough for my classroom, as well as, one of my teaching teammates. Typically I would only need a small-group set for centers, but at the beginning of the year, we do practice card games in partners as a whole class.

Well friends, there you go! This is a simple, inexpensive ($1), and quick (less than 30 minutes) way to make card-games more manageable for little hands.

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