Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Numerical Order - A Card Game

Deal out 3 - 10 cards to each player. 

Say "Go!"

Players place their cards in a row face-up on the table. 

Then players rearrange their cards, in order from lowest to highest (left to right). 

Because we are playing with limited numbers here, players may get duplicates or more of one number. Same numbers are placed on top of each other.

When a player has his cards in order, he shouts, "In Order!" and all players must stop. His cards are checked. If he has them correctly arranged, he scores 10 points for the round. If incorrect, he scores zero and all other players count their points.

Other player points are scored by starting at the left and giving one point for each card that is in correct order. When a misplaced card is reached, scoring ends. For example: If the player had out the numbers 1, 5, 7, 6, 9, 14, 15, 18, he would score 3 points for the first three cards are in correct order. Even though most of the rest of the cards are in correct order, scoring would end at the 6 which is incorrectly placed.

Play for 10 rounds (or any other agreed upon number of rounds) keeping a total of points scored.

VARIATIONS

1.  Deal 3 cards the first round, 4 the second, 5 the third and continue to 10 (or even 15) cards.

2. Use fractions, mixed numbers, decimals instead of whole numbers.

3. Have math facts on the cards. Arrange the cards by their correct answer.

4. Use much larger numbers, such as thousands, ten thousand, hundred thousands, or even millions.

5. Play with a scoring variation. If playing with fractions, give fractional points. (If there are six cards in play and a player completes the order, he would score one point. If he had 3 cards in order, he would score 3/6 or reduce it to 1/2. This would give the players some good practice in addition of fractions, especially if a different number of cards is dealt each time, thus giving different denominators.)  Get creative with the scoring for great math practice!

1 comment:

  1. You have so many great ideas for games. I love that many of them focus on math.

    Congradulations on the award.
    http://highhillhomeschool.blogspot.com/2012/02/blog-awards.html

    ReplyDelete