­­­­Now, let's practice multiplying two-digit numbers. In this activity, you will use a deck of playing cards, a pen, and a sheet of paper.

Before y­ou start, remove all the queens and the jacks from the deck of cards. Leave the kings and the jokers. Separate the cards into four piles, one for each suit. Don't arrange the cards. It's better if the cards are placed out of order. Shuffle each suit separately and then set them on top of the table. Make sure you arrange the four piles in two columns. Put them there to stand for the ones pl­ace and the tens place in a column multiplication problem. (You will sometimes see the terms "ones column" and "tens column" used.) The piles of cards will look like this:

 

Pick one card from each pile. When you see the number on the card, write this down on the piece of paper on the same place value the stack of cards stands for. Fill out your place values. After you have all four numbers, you can solve your column multiplication problem.

The joker cards are going to be your bonus cards. These cards represent zero. If you pick one of the­ joker cards, always put it in the ones place so that you can multiply by a tens number.

If you pick up one of the kings, this means that the place value where the king is supposed to be will be empty. You only need to multiply a two-digit number by a one-digit number.

For example, you picked 8 and 1 from the top piles. Then you picked 1 and 4 from the bottom piles. Your column multiplication problem will look like this:


You can continue to practice your multiplication until you run out of cards.

Ready to move on to the next lesson?
 Column Multiplication with Tens Numbers