Top Trumps card games have a ton of fascinating facts in a little deck of cards. One of their newest themes, “Great Women” includes cards picturing and describing many strong, accomplished women ranging from J.K Rowling, Harriet Tubman,and Catherine the Great to Oprah Winfrey, Malala Yousafzai, and Madonna. They stand out in the worlds of entertainment, politics, human rights, the arts and philanthropy, with several winning Nobel Prizes. Each card has a short biography with five numerically ranked categories to be compared during play–power, fame, impact, courage and rating. Two or more players can play the game as all the cards are dealt leaving one card of your hand, face up. The first person to play calls out a category and best or highest value (usually picks her highest number) and the other players reveal the ranking of their character for that same category. The player whose woman had the highest value for that category, wins all the others’ cards for that round. I found that there was a lot of conversation around the values given to these women where often a player felt their character should have had more value! Much was learned in this comparison of rankings each round, as players considered the accomplishments of these women. It was hard to beat Catherine the Great in Impact (95) or Malala Yousafzai in Courage (93), or Oprah Winfrey in the Top Trumps rating (9). Top Trumps encourages language learning in several areas–building vocabulary, social language, comparisons, and descriptions. All this smart play can be packed away in a tight case for take along play too.

Available at Top Trumps