5-Card Draw to a Target
Math Concepts:
Adding 2-digit numbers
Materials
blank paper, pencil, playing cards
Players
2
Set up
Choose a target number, say 100. Use 1- 9 and queens (used as 0’s) from a deck of cards.
Play
Each player picks up five random cards. Two 2-digit numbers are made out of these cards, the fifth card is unused. The two numbers are added and the player closest to the target (above or below) wins a point for that round.
Goal
The highest number of points after a fixed number of rounds wins.
Example move
Suppose one player gets the cards: 1, 7, 9, 6, 3. The player could, for example, form 71 + 36, or 67 +31 or 13 + 96. Of these choices, 67 + 31 is 98 and is closest.
Discussion and Tips
Also, discuss how the pairing of the tens and ones makes no difference- what is important is deciding which digits will be tens and which will be ones. In the example above, 67 + 31 is the same result as 61 + 17.
Discuss what is the higher priority– getting the tens digit close are getting the ones digit close.
Discussion and Tips
Instead of one point per round, the score received could be the distance from the target. The lowest total score after several rounds wins.
One option is to use three-digit numbers, a target number of 1000, and each player receives seven cards. Another option is to use subtraction with a much smaller target number.