Use this Play Together guide to learn how you can help your child turn Uno & Friends play time into a positive learning and relationship-building experience. To learn more about why playing games with your children is so important, check out our Science of Play page.

Talk Before You Play

Take a minute to talk with your child about how the Flexibility, Planning, and Time Management thinking skills work, and why they are important for success in school and at home.

Set Gameplay Goals

Uno & Friends lets players challenge friends and family members via an internet connection and downloading the app is free, making it easy to play along with your child or to challenge other players online.

Gameplay Goals:

• Place in the top 3 of an Uno match.
• Use a power-up to gain an advantage in a match.
• Win an Uno match against friends, family, or other players.

Stop and Reflect

After you've won your first Uno & Friends match, take a moment to discuss the importance of the thinking skills at play with your child.

• Start a conversation with your child about her strategies while playing against opponents in Uno & Friends. Talk about the decisions that your child had to make after first seeing the hand that she had been dealt. Was there a particular order in which your child initially wanted to use her cards? Talk about the changes in strategy and plans that special cards present. Your child had to adapt when to changing situations when playing her own special cards or when playing against an opponents special cards. Explain to your child that being able to quickly and effectively adapt to her own hand or her opponents' hands requires and uses the Flexibility thinking skill. How can being able to create strategies, but also alter these strategies when advantageous help your child be more successful against her opponents?

• Talk about situations in the real world in which the combination of Planning and Flexibility can be advantageous. For example, discuss the steps required for planning a vacation. Good planning can not only make a vacation less stressful, but can also aid with the ability to be flexible. When planning for a vacation, determining the type of weather in the destination can help your child determine what type of clothing to pack. Preparing for different types of weather can also help your child be flexible when she arrives. Planning for the possibility of warmer or cooler weather, rain, snow or other changes can give your child more options for comfortable clothing when she is away from home. Discuss other ways in which good Planning and Flexibility skills can be advantageous while taking a vacation away from home.

• Ask your child about the pressures of a ticking clock while playing Uno & Friends. How much of a factor did the limited amount of time make in your child's decision making? Were there situations in which she wished she had more time? Discuss strategies for managing the clock that your child might be able to employ in future games, such as preparing a few strategies for different situations so that she may act quickly on her turn. Your child may have also noticed when other players were close to winning. Did your child utilize any strategies to mitigate their opponents chances of winning in these situations? Using special cards, such as "skip turn" or "draw" cards are possible ways to buy your child more time to use more cards before an opponent steals the win.

• Time Management is a very important skill both at home and in the classroom. Talk with your child about situations in which some of the same skills and strategies she used in Uno & Friends might apply to real life situations. For example, when coming home from school your child may have a number of responsibilities that require her attention, time, and effort. How does your child decide which activities should be completed first? Managing her time between completing household chores, difficult homework assignments, and leaving time for leisure and relaxation are important to being an effective student and reducing stress. Talk with your child about planning to complete the most difficult tasks early, or multitasking in order to save time. Discuss the similarities in changing strategies as the result of time constraints both in Uno & Friends and at home or in the classroom.

Our Make it Work activities are designed to transform your child’s gameplay to real-world improvements in thinking and academic skills. If you’re just getting started with LearningWorks for Kids, we suggest you try them all to find which are the best for you and your child.

Introduce the Thinking Skills

Read over the pages for Flexibility, Planning, and Time Management. Then take some time to introduce these skills to your child.

Explain that:

• Flexibility is the thinking skill that helps us adapt to new situations, learn from mistakes and change what we are doing in order to deal with different challenges.

• Planning is the thinking skill that helps us to develop a systematic approach for setting and achieving goals, and complete tasks by doing things step-by-step.

• Time Management is the thinking skill that helps us complete tasks on time, finish things more quickly and be efficient and aware of our use of time and effort.

Flexibility Activity

Get unstuck. Get stuck and then unstuck again in front of your kids. One of the best ways for children to learn about Flexibility skills is to see how other people resolve their own difficulties. Let your child observe you in problem solving, even if you are unsure of whether you will be able to overcome the difficulty. Model talking your way through a problem in which you are stuck. Children who are inflexible tend to believe that there is nothing that they can do to change a difficult situation. Even if you encounter a situation where there is no clear resolution, demonstrate some brainstorming skills about potential methods to solve the problem in front of you. Be sure to introduce perspective to help your child to realize that some problems simply go unsolved.

Planning Activity

Create a master calendar of events to plan ahead. Model and use calendars to keep track of family events, and to prepare for all of the important events and deadlines that your child must attend to. Have him personalize individual events using pictures, graphics, stickers, or doodles. Your child may wish to take pictures to put on the calendar as reminders. Place the calendar in a public area, possibly with a duplicate calendar in his room. Encourage him to think about connecting each activity to how he decorated the particular date, helping him understand the details related to each marked date. Have your child post the calendar prominently in his room and give rewards or privileges for keeping it accurate and up-to-date.

Time Management Activity

Gimme a break. If your child has stagnated while performing a task, such as schoolwork or a chore, get him to move quickly doing something else. This could be a physical activity such as going for a quick bike ride, or something as simple as singing a song at a quickened pace. Getting him to move quickly in a fun (or even funny) activity may help him to become more aware of his pace in relation to other activities. Another strategy would be to take a 5-10 minute exercise break, which could include anything from doing a set of push-ups or situps, running up and down the stairs, or taking the dog out for a short walk. Initially, a parent will want to be in charge of when such breaks occur, but eventually we want the child to learn to identify when he needs to take a break himself, and furthermore, to be able to demonstrate that he is using the break responsibly by coming back to work better than before.