Right in the Middle

What You Need:

• Deck of cards with the face cards (jacks, queens and kings) removed
• Paper
• Marker

What You Do:

1. Tell your child that for the purposes of the game aces= 1.
2. Using the marker, your child should divide the sheet of white paper into three sections.
3. Then, have her write the word mean at the top of the far left column.
4. She should then write the word median on top of the center column.
5. Have her write "Which is Greater?" on top of the far right column.
6. Have your child shuffle the deck of cards.
7. Then, have her turn the deck over to you and deal her five cards.
8. First, she should calculate the mean of the card by adding all five cards together and dividing by four.
9. Have her write her answer in the mean column with the marker.
10. Now, have her find the median of the four cards.
11. Explain to her that in order to find the median, she should arrange her cards numerically (from smallest to largest) and figure out which number is the middle number of the sequence. 
12. Once she finds the median, encourage her to write it in the median column.
13. Then, she should look at both numbers in the mean and median columns and determine which number is greater.
14. Next, using the marker, have her write that number in the "greater" column.
15. Keep playing until the deck is depleted.