Multiplication Fun - Playing Cards

Natalie made it through the 3's without a hitch. Woohoo! The egg carton was fun and we may revisit for another set of #'s but for now it's adios egg carton game and hello playing cards. For the 4's we will be using our "modified" set of playing cards to play card games to help learn and reninforce our 4's multiplication tables. Last night we played pick a card, high card, and another game we made up.

Here's what you do:

Find a set of playing cards...old ones are preferred because we are marking them up a little. If you have rook cards you wouldn't have to mark them up, but I didnt' want to lose my rook cards so I bought a cheap deck of cards and got the markers out.

Get out the A-K and mark them up. If you have a joker to use as a zero you can get out the A-Q. I made my Ace a 1, Joker a 0, Jack a 11, and Queen a 12.

For the first game I shuffled the cards and spread them out in my hand. I said pick a card any card to make it more fun and she started selecting. When she selected the card she had 5 to 10 seconds to shout out what 4 multiplied by that number is. If she got it right she won the card. Whoever had the most cards when all cards were selected wins.

Next Game I divided the cards into 2 stacks. We then both flipped our cards over and yelled the answer to what 4 multiplied by the number was. Whoever had the highest card one.

The next game is basically the same with the exception that I spread the cards out to look like a memory game and we flipped the cards that way. Since there is an uneven number of cards whoever wins the last set, wins the remaining card if they get the answer right.

We had a good time "playing cards" last night while learing multiplication.

These games are fun for your child and they almost forget they are learning at the same time. In addition to the games we play we also every couple of days make a practice test and set the minute on the oven timer to make sure she is getting the information from the games to the paper. This helps reinforce learning and gets her practice for how the test will be in the classroom.

I hope you have fun mixing it up a little. Check back in two weeks. Hopefully we will be soaring to our 5's.