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Math Concepts
Place value and differences- 2-digit numbers
Materials
Paper, pencil, playing cards
Players
2
Set up
Write the numbers 5, 10, 25, and 50 vertically on a piece of paper. Put a single blank space on each side of the 5, and two blank spaces on each side of the other numbers. One player fills in the blanks on the left side
and the other fills the right side. A single digit will go in each blank space. Each player also has one extra blank to use once with a number to ignore. Play with a deck of playing cards from 0 to 9 (use the queen as the 0).
Play
Randomly pick a card from the deck, and put it back in after it is used. Both players must use that number as a digit somewhere in the spaces that haven’t been filled in yet. Once all the spaces are filled, the player’s values are compared to each of the target numbers.
Goal
Whichever player gets closest to each target number gets a point, with both players getting a point if they are equally close. Whoever has the most points wins.
Discussion and Tips
Discuss strategies for where to put small numbers, middle numbers, and large numbers.
Variations
Vary this game by having a different set of target numbers.
You can also choose to score the game by summing up all the errors for each player. For this, the player with the smaller score wins.