10 Easy Card Games You Can Play in 10 Minutes or Less
My girls love playing games during breakfast before they go to school and it’s a fun start to their day.
I also love quick and easy card games that I can play with my littler girls while the big girls are at school – a ten minute game goes a long way between loads of laundry or errands!
If you’re looking for a few games that you can play quickly and easily when a few minutes pop up, these are all great choices.
Many of them are also small games that you can slip in your bag and take along to a doctor’s appointment or when you’re going out to a restaurant to keep everyone from sinking into boredom and whining while you wait!
I hope you enjoy these games as much as our family has!
(Keep in mind that the first few times some of these games may take you longer than 10 minutes as you get the hang of the rules and how to play).
10 Easy Card Games You Can Play in 10 Minutes or Less
SPOT IT!
If I had to choose a single easy card game, it would be this one. It’s great for all ages, has several variations and usually takes more like 3-4 minutes to play a full round. Everyone in our family loves this one and it’s so easy to learn!
GUESS WHO?
We had a travel set of this when I was a kid and I remember playing ENDLESS rounds with my sisters while we were on a long family vacation on summer.
SET
We gave this one to Ani for Christmas this past year and it’s been in steady rotation since then. You can have any number of people play and it’s fast-paced and simple to understand!
SEQUENCE JUNIOR
Okay, this one isn’t a card game, but we’ve been playing a lot of this one at our house lately – it’s so nice because it’s quick and easy! Right now, it’s one of Tally’s favorites (she is recently four).
THE BEARS AND THE BEES
This one is SO pretty and good for almost all ages. This one DOES need a fair amount of table space, so it’s less good if you’re sitting in a waiting room.
GNOMING A ROUND
If I had to choose a single favorite easy card game right now, this is my current favorite. It’s kind of like Nine Innings, and Tally and I have played hundreds of rounds of it this year!
SLEEPING QUEENS
This is one of my favorite games for beginning game players (my girls have all started being really into it around three). Ours is so hammered at this point, we probably need a replacement set!
MEMORY
We bought a memory game set at a garage sale when Ella was about 2 and it had WAYYYYYY too many matches. It took forever! When Star was a toddler, we got this fish memory game instead and with only twelve matches instead of one million, I’m much more willing to play. Plus they’re so cute!
NUTS ABOUT MUTTS
This is similar to Uno although there are a bunch of extra cards to make it a little more zippy (we usually leave them out when we’re playing with the littler girls to keep it straight forward and simple).
DUTCH BLITZ
This was my favorite game in college to play with my roommates (we were RUTHLESS) and now Ella can basically crush Bart and me every single time. And yet we continue to play . . .
Any other favorite easy card games (or board games!) you can play in 5-10 minutes? I’d love more suggestions!
If you liked this post about easy card games, you might like these posts too:
- Our favorite games for two people
- Games to play with young children that won’t bore you to tears
- 10 Favorite Card and Board Games at Our House
Photos by Heather Mildenstein
We love UNO FLIP! It adds a fun twist to the regular game of UNO. Monopoly Deal is also fun and is pretty quick. Cover Your Assets also from Grandpa Beck is a family favorite.
Rat a Tat Cat is a quick and easy card game. My 5 year old loves it and beats me almost every time!
Have you played Tenzi? We just picked it up and LOVE it. It’s quick, easy, and opens to dozens of simple variations!
Yes! My in-laws gave it to us a few years ago with a whole deck of variations!
We love Dungeon Mayhem at our house! My 6 and 4 year old boys can both play. I can only handle quick, easy to understand games and I really like it!
Fluxx is my favorite card game. You have to be a reader (each card is unique, so it would take a fair amount of effort to memorize), but it is just so fun. I prefer the original, but there are tons of themes if you’d rather
Too Many Monkeys is a fun and easy one.
We just started playing 3 Up 3 Down. It’s a card game and super fast and fun.
Taco cat goat cheese pizza is super fun!
Blink! is such a fun one!
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza…it gets rowdy fun!
Red Light Green Light card game
Not a card game but one of our favorites- Dice – it only requires 6 dice, a piece of paper and a pen. And the bonus is that it’s a great way to work on math skills!