Hit the Target

What You Need:

• Deck of playing cards with the face cards (jacks, queens, and kings) removed
• Scratch paper
• Pencil
• 2 or more players

What You Do:

1. Have your child remove the face cards from the deck and set them aside.
2. Ask him to shuffle the deck and deal out four cards to each player. Make sure he deals them face down, so nobody can see the hand they were dealt. No peeking!
3. Place the remaining deck face down in the center of the table.
4. Have one of the players flip over the top card and place it face up on the table. This is the target number.
5. Announce that aces = 1.
6. Count to three and have all players turn their cards over at the same time.
7. Encourage players to add, subtract, multiply or divide the numbers in any combination to try to reach the target number. Make sure that players use all four of their cards. Have players use scratch paper to verify their math.
8. Whoever can create a equation that hits the target number first gets one point.
9. The player to reach 3 points first wins!
10. When four cards become too easy, try playing with five cards instead.

Helpful Tip: Tell players to keep rearranging the layout of the cards to see new equation possibilities.