Family Maths Games with Cards

A. Completing Number Sequences (from Reception/Kindergarten onwards)

From a standard 52-card deck, take only the 1–10 cards. Shuffle them and deal 10 cards to each player (2–3 players) or 6 cards (4–5 players). If the youngest player has an ace, they can start with laying this ace down. Otherwise, the player with an ace starts. If no player has an ace, the youngest player starts by taking a card from the pack. If it’s not an ace, then the next player takes a card from the pack, and so on.

Once there is an ace laid on the table, the next player can either put a 2 from the same suit next to the ace or put another ace. If none of these are possible, then they player takes a card from the pack. If they get a suitable card, they can lay it down. In the following, each player, at their turn, try to complete the sequence 1–10 in each suit.

The winner is the player who finishes their cards first.

Variants:

1- You can use the face cards to extend the sequences up to 13 by e.g. using post-its to write the numbers 11, 12, and 13.[1]

2- Start the game by taking out all aces and 10s (or 13s) and putting them on opposite sides of the table (the aces to the left of the youngest player, and the 10s/13s to their right). The youngest player starts. They can either complete from the left (first with a 2 and always in the right suit) or from the right (first with a 9/12 in the right suit).

3- Start the game by taking out a card (at random or of your choice) from each suit and place them on the table more or less at their correct final position (when the number lines are complete). The youngest player starts. They can complete each number line either from the left or from the right of the already placed card(s) in each suit. This will help children develop their ability to start counting forwards and backwards from any number.

B1. Battle (from Reception/Kindergarten onwards)

Battle is a nice game to play with young children to help them familiarise with numbers and have them practice comparing numbers (see for instance here).

A variant is to introduce a point system instead of winning cards: when one wins, they gain as many points as their number is more than that of the other player (and there is no ‘battle’ when both cards are the same value). The number of points can be materialised by counters (any small objects will work, e.g. paper clips, dry beans…), or, with older children, by coins (for this, you need to have a collection of small coins), which gives children the opportunity to manipulate coins and understand that different coins have different values. When playing with younger children, you can start only with the number cards from 1 to 5 to not get too difficult subtractions. The players put aside the cards that have been already played and count the points when there are no more cards left. Show your child(ren) that it is easier to count counters by making piles of ten counters — and it will reinforce the concept of place value.

B2. Battle Variant (from Year 3/Grade 2 onwards)

Same as above, but instead of having no battle when the cards are the same, you continue as if you were playing the actual game and continue the battle until it is won. When it is won, the wining player multiplies their first and last cards in the battle together and subtracts the product of the losing player’s first and last cards to make the number of points won from that battle.

C. Race to 100 (from Year 1/Grade 1 onwards)

Prepare a collection of 1p and 10p coins or of smaller and larger objects (dry beans, paper clips, dry beans, lego bricks — e.g. one brick and 10 such small bricks attached together). The game can be played with number cards from 1–10 or with a 10-sided die. At each turn, players take a card at random from the pack or roll the die. They look at the number and take the corresponding number of small objects. As soon as they have 10 small objects, they exchange them against one larger object (which has therefore a value of 10, while the smaller object has a value of 1). The winner is the first to reach 100 (= 10 larger objects).

During the game, regularly reinforce the concept of place value by counting how many points your child has, showing the correspondence between the way a number is written (don’t hesitate to write it) and the number of larger (tens) and smaller objects (ones) that represent this number and also the name of the number — the logic is more apparent above forty, but you can say that if we applied the same logic, 11 would be called onety-one, 23 twoty-three, etc.

Extension: go backwards using subtraction once you have reached 100.

D. Variant of Black Peter (from Year 2/Grade 1 onwards)

From a standard 52-card deck, take only the 1–9 cards and remove the 3 of spades. The dealer shuffles and deals all of the cards to the players, one card at a time. Some players may have one or two more cards than others; this is acceptable. Players look at their cards and discard any pairs they have, where a pair is defined as any two cards of the same suit that add to 10.[2]

Beginning with the dealer, each player takes turns offering their hand face-down to the person on their left. That person selects a card without looking and adds it to their hand. This player then sees if the selected card makes a pair with any of their original cards. If so, the pair is discarded face up as well. The player who just took a card then offers their hand to the person on their left, and so on.

The objective of the game is to continue to take cards, discarding pairs, until no more pairs can be made. The player with the card that has no match is “stuck with Black Peter” (which is 7 of spades) and loses.

E1. Finding the Target Number (from Year 2/Grade 1 onwards)

From a standard 52-card deck, take only the 1–10 cards. Lay face up 1 card and 4 others in a row underneath. The objective is to use addition/subtraction with at least 2 cards of the group of 4 to find the number shown on the card above. Each card can be used only once. There are different possibilities to play:

- The player can have up to a given time to try to find a solution and then say it. If they have found a solution, they take all the cards they used plus the target card. New cards are then laid down, etc.

- As above but once the player has said their solution, other players can suggest their solutions and if one of them use more cards, then they take the cards (or not — it could just be for the sake of discovering other possibilities).

- All players play at the same time and the first to find a solution say it and if nobody has a solution that uses more cards, they take the cards used plus the target card. If two players have equivalent solutions, they split the cards between them.

There are sometimes no solutions, so, after a while, it is allowed to say “I think there are no solutions here” and change one or more or all the cards.

To make this game more challenging, you can use the face cards to have greater numbers, for instance using post-its on the cards. You can choose to number 10 face cards from 11 to 20 and add them to the rest or make two sets from 11–16…[1]

E2. Finding the Target Number (from Year 4/Grade 3 onwards)

Do the same as above but with all four operations. (Children might not realise that they can make 1 by dividing a number by itself and so need to be told when the opportunity arises.)

[1] If you have number cards from 1 to 20 (for instance Elfer raus by Ravensburger), you can then make the sequence from 1 to 20.

[2] As in note 1, if you have number cards from 1 to 20, you can define as pairs any two cards of the same suit that add to 20: 1 and 19, 2 and 18, 3 and 17, etc. and decide to remove e.g. a 7 to have as ‘black Peter’ a 13 (of any suit you want!).