Thanks for sharing this! My daughter is 3 and she likes to look through my cards with me and comes up with her own rules how to play (with some less-optimal ideas sometimes, such as playing Memory with commander decks)

Btw I had success when playing with her a pen&paper-like adventure and using cards drawn randomly from draft chaff as inspiration and for illustrations. It helps us craft some nice little stories!

A while ago there was a post on reddit by someone who adapted the game to play with their kid too. Iirc they made their own simplified cards too. Maybe thats worth investigating for you :)

Just use creatures and lands while ignoring any special abilities and such.
Then start to introduce the abilities on just those cards and then add some simpler sorcery cards.
Repeat with other card types until the kids have a full grasp.
Then they beat you every time.

I really like the idea of calling it the Sleep Zone. I might use that for myself. 😊 I am curious to know how she will rename exile though in the future.

As a kid who grew up watching my brothers play mtg back in the 90's ( circa 95 when i was 6 ), i can tell you thats a great idea!

Sounds pretty fun! Maybe you've already thought about this, but as she begins to learn to read, maybe y'all could have fun learning the Pokemon card game together? It already is designed as a sort of simplified version of Magic, where you only have one creature out at a time, there's no interacting on an opponent's turn, you can take all the game actions you want during your turn until you attack, and defeated Pokemon are "knocked out" rather than killed. Also from what I can tell, events at many local game stores are family-friendly and well-attended.