Place Value Top Trumps

This is a simple Top Trumps-style maths game with the focus on helping children to understand Place Value.

The download features 36 game cards, each styled to look a little like an mp3 music player. Each card has a three or four digit number. Players mix the cards and share them out between them. Then each player holds their cards so that they can see only the face card of their pile. The player to the dealer's left starts by selecting a digit position: Thousands, Hundreds, Tens or Units/Ones. The other players look at this digit position on their own cards, the player with the highest value digit wins all of the cards. For example:

Should the player with the first card here (5210) choose "Thousands" he would win since his 5 is greater than the other player's 2. 

However, if he chose "Hundreds" (an unlikely choice), he would lose since his 2 is smaller than the other player's 6.

The winner places all of the top cards, including their own, to the bottom of their pile. It is then their turn again to choose a digit position from the next card. If two or more cards have the same value for any particular position all of the cards are placed in the middle of the table and the same player chooses again from their next card. The winner of the next hand can now take the cards from the table too.

The player with all the cards at the end is the winner!

Play the game a few times and see how much better children are at making decisions about numbers based on Place Value.

There are 36 full colour game cards on the pdf download - 9 cards per page. Full colour printing is an expense, but we have found that colourful, quality resources (especially if laminated) have a very long life. Alternatively, of course, you could print out in grey-scale.

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