Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Toss Up Game

(Today’s guest post is from Holly Jachowski with Education.com. Education.com provides thousands of teacher-approved learning resources for teachers, students, and families. In education, there is no such thing as "one size fits all," so we develop our materials to complement different teaching philosophies across subjects and grades. We strive to empower all kinds of educators through access to these resources and raise kids' confidence in learning.)

It's important to be able to add and subtract quickly and accurately, and this activity is the perfect way for your children or students to practice their math. All you need to play is a deck of playing cards, paper and a pencil. The primary focus in this game is addition, but if any one player gets too far ahead, the other players can work together to level the playing field and use subtraction to take away points from the leader.
What You Need: 

  • Deck of playing cards (with the face cards removed)
  • Paper
  • Pencil
What You Do: 

  1. Divide the cards evenly between all of the players and explain that for the purposes of this game, aces= 1.
  2. Decide how many points to play to, in order to declare a winner, and which player will be the scorekeeper. Give the scorekeeper the paper and pencil.
  3. To begin a round, players should flip over the top card of their pile and place it face up for all the other players to see. Each player should take a turn solving an equation using the numbers played. Only two numbers can be used.
  4. Players can then decide whether they want to use the result to add to their own score by creating an addition equation, or create a subtraction equation to take away points from another player.
  5. The first player to reach the set amount of points you agreed upon at the beginning of the game wins.
If you're working with older kids, you can also incorporate multiplication and division problems.

No comments: