This is a game that I have played with grade 2 students during my practicum. It is a card game that is played individually (with every student having their own set of cards- which worked great during this last year when I taught it as a TOC).
Solitaire 11 (or “Elevens”)
Object of the game: to use up all the cards in the deck in pairs that add up to 11 in total. Before play: Students will remove all the royal cards (Jack, Queen, King- and Jokers if still in the deck). (If not removed, students could play where they need to match a Jack, Queen and King in a set of three to remove them from the play area). Aces hold a value of 1.
How to Play: Shuffle your cards and deal three rows of three cards each. All 9 of these cards should be facing upwards so that they are visible. The remaining cards become the Deck for the duration of the game. Empty spaces in the 9-card formation are automatically filled by placing a card from the Deck in the free space. Once you run out of cards in the Deck, do not fill the empty spaces in the card formation with any other cards. To play this game, look at your 9-card formation and see if any cards can be matched that add up to 11 in total (ie. 5 and 6 equal 11, 10 and an Ace equal 11). If you have a matching pair that can create this sum, then you may remove them from place. Fill in the gaps left by these two cards with two cards from the Deck. If no cards in the 9-card formation equal 11, students can add one more row of 3 (now a 4x3 play zone) Only cards in the 9-card formation are available to play with, and you may not build any cards on top of each other during the game. Cards in the Deck should remain flipped/unknown until in the play formation. Game is finished when all cards in the Deck are used. https://gamerules.com/rules/elevens/
BC Curriculum connections: Grade 2- content: “addition and subtraction facts to 20 (introduction of computational strategies)” “addition and subtraction to 100”
Curricular competency- reasoning and analyzing “develop mental math strategies and abilities to make sense of quantities”