Sum It Up

In Math right now we are learning to add numbers in the thousands.  Adding is a skill that gets better and better with practice, so on Friday, we played a card game called Sum It Up.  It gave us some practice and we had fun at the same time!

It's easy to play at home and you can have as many players as you like.  The goal of the game is to make the biggest sum (answer to an adding question) possible.  Here's how to play:

1)  Make a game board for each person that looks like this:
  ___  ___  ___  ___
+___  ___  ___  ___
  ___  ___  ___  ___

2)  Get a deck of cards and remove all of the face cards and 10s.  (You only need Ace - 9 for this game.  Aces = 1).

3)  Place the cards face down.

4)  The first player chooses a card from the deck and shows all the other players.

5)  Each person decides where to put the number shown on the card.  For example, if the number chosen was 4, your gameboard might look like this:

  ___  ___   4     ___
+___  ___  ___  ___
  ___  ___  ___  ___

6)  Once you have written down a number you cannot move it (write in pen if you think you might be tempted!).

7)  Continue choosing cards and writing the numbers down until all the lines on the game board are filled up.

8)  When all the lines are filled, each player adds up their numbers to get their sum.

9)  Whoever gets the greatest sum wins that round and gets a point.


Do you know any other fun math games?  What other ways do you like to practice math skills?

Happy adding!