Card games for teaching maths

The following 5 card games are listed in order from easiest maths to hardest maths. For this game you will need a pack of cards with the picture cards King, Queen and Jack removed and a coin any regular coin will do. To play this game the pile of cards are placed face down between the players. One player tosses the coin to see if head or tails will be played this round. Each player then draws a card from the deck and turns it face up for everyone to see.

The player with the highest card if the coin was heads or lowest card if it was tails wins the round. The winner collects all the cards and adds them to their pile. This continues until 1 player has collected all the cards. Memory Table s - This is a tried and true method for helping children remember their tables which removes the need to chant or sing which both remind me of Oliver Twist for some reason.

This game is best for 2 players but does require you to make your own cards rather than use a regular set of playing cards - you will need 20 cards in total. You need to write the table being learnt on 10 of the cards and the answers on the other Just like the Match Up M emory games all over Learn From Play the cards are placed face down on a table and players take it in turn to reveal 2 cards. When the equation and answers match the player gets to keep this pair of cards.

This game relies on children using their memory to find the pairs of cards and teaches the multiplication set being used. The player with the most pairs wins the game and hopefully the child playing learns their tables while having fun. Fish - This is almost identical to Memory Table and uses the cards you made for that game but this time the cards are held rather than turned.

For this game 2 players are each dealt 6 of the 20 cards and the remaining 8 cards are placed in the middle. Players remove any pairs of cards and place these next to them. Players then take turns asking for the equation or the solution to find the pair for their cards. Just like in Memory Tables t he person with the most pairs wins. I want to make a point of the fact that I say use 20 cards and not 24 in these first 2 games.

The idea of teaching children tables up to 12 is very antiquated just like chanting really. It comes from a time when we dealt in dozens, yard, feet and inches and before we used the metric system. As Australia went metric in it is probably high time our tables followed suit.

It is also important to teach children that 12 times anything is just 10 times it plus 2 times it so they can work out any table by just adding the composite parts. As I said in my article last week on the history of card games and the life lessons they teach this game teaches a lot of maths. It teaches children how to add and subtract as they need to add their cards to work out how many more cards they need to not bust.

T hey need to work out whether an Ace will be a 1 or an 11 based on the cards in their hands and the probability that the next card will be a card they need or, as there are 45 cards of value 9 or higher, will push them over the limit. In just 20 rounds of 21, with 4 players, a child may perform well over calculations to check their cards and that of other players.

Can you imagine any 6 year old wanting to sit for half an hour and solve computations — nope neither can I. You will need at least 2 players and in the video above, I shared the 2 main ways to differentiate this game for K-1 students, and then again for 2nd-3rd grade students.

I will describe each briefly below. Students will take turns looking at their 5 cards in front of them and try to make the target number in any way they can by adding or subtracting. Jacks are wild in this game! Hence the name, Wild Jacks.

For the bottom hand above, students could do this in many different ways:. Once they make the target number, they remove those cards and put them to the side in a pile. Then, the second player will go. Students go back and forth until there are no more cards left in the pile.

To see who wins, students count up all the cards they used throughout the game to make the target number. Whoever has the most, wins! This should entice them to use as many cards as they can to reach that target number. If a student cannot make the target number with their 5 cards, they must discard all 5 of their cards to a discard pile and receive 5 new cards!

Their turn is skipped and the next player goes. It is simply the number we flipped. So above, the target number would be Students will still try to make that target number in any way they can using the most cards possible, but this time they can use multiplication, addition, subtraction, and division all at the same time!

Looking for more standards-based math games that will engage your learners and save you lots of time?! Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Each round, participants turns asking other players for specific cards they need to complete pairs in their own hands.

If a player has the card value that is requested, it must be surrendered. The object of the game can be either to accumulate the most pairs or to be the first player to have no cards left.

Modifications: Custom card decks containing things like geometric shapes, fractions , or basic math facts can be used instead of traditional playing card decks to target advanced mathematical skills like equivalent fractions or geometric similarity. I can say that, without a doubt, Cribbage is the reason I was able to learn mental addition and skip counting quickly and reliably in my elementary years.

I have fond memories of playing series of cribbage games with my dad, my uncles, and both of my grandfathers throughout my childhood. The object of the game is to reach a finishing score of points before your opponent. To do this, players take turns playing cards and adding up the total aloud until they reach the number 31 or neither player can play a card without going over Along the way, points are awarded for things like reaching the totals of 15 or 31 exactly, matching the previously played card, or completing a run.

Younger players may need to count the spots on the cards to do this, while more experienced young mathematicians can keep the total by doing the mental calculations.

Once each player has run out of cards to play, players retrieve their played cards and score points for certain combinations. Often times, cribbage is played with a specifically designed peg board, but keeping score with pencil and paper is a way to add in even more mathematical practice! Modifications: Cribbage can also be played with three players or with two teams of two players.