Tug of War

Negative vs. Positive

A 2-player or team game.

Objectives: numberline use and familiarity, integer addition (extends to subtraction).

Materials: deck of cards, paper clip, number line.

Winning: If after both cards been played, one team pulled the paperclip off their side, they win.

Set up: Red cards are negative numbers, black cards are positive numbers. Face cards are worth 10, Ace is worth one.

Game 1: Adding Only Game 2: Add or Subtract

Divide a deck of cards into Red (negative) and Black (positive),
each team gets one color. The paperclip starts at zero. Each team
draws two cards and chooses one to play, one to discard. Hold the
play card face down and then both teams reveal at the same time.
The teams add their card to the paper clip’s position. If after both
have been added one team pulled the paperclip off, they win.
Randomly deal the deck to each team (they will have red and black
cards). When a card is played, they say if they want to add or
subtract the card they’re playing. So the negative team will want to
add their red/negative cards and subtract their black/positive cards,
and the positive team vice versa.

Pull!