Math Beyond Workbooks

The Four Card Shuffle

• skills involved: number sense, order of operations, basic operations
• materials needed: a set of twenty cards, numbered 1 ‚ 20

This game, which is adapted from a game in Family Math by Jean Kerr Stenmark, Virginia Thompson, and Ruth Cossey (Lawrence Hall of Science, 1986) works best with two or three people.

1. Shuffle the cards, place the deck face-down, and turn over the top five cards.



2. Use each value on the first four cards once, with any of the four basic operations, to obtain the value on the fifth card.



3. Players can play cooperatively, or if skills are evenly matched, the player who finds a solution first scores a point. Play until all cards have been used (four rounds).