Mulitiplication Help-I Need Suggestions Please

[Hopefulmama]

Currently, we HS through a cyber charter school and are very happy overall. We use the Calvert Curriculum. DD is doing well with it and picks up on things quickly. She is 7. The other day she asked to learn multiplication. I showed her the concept and she got it immediately. We breezed through what is in the curriculum. I am looking for some fun resources for her-games, stories, online activities, that focus on multiplication. She would love it. She loves to read, so anything that incorporates math into a story setting would be wonderful. She enjoys it, but hates to sit and memorize. I can't say that I blame her. Thank you for any suggestions.

[Amatullah0]

Singapore Math (along with many other companies) offers books of story problems. Try looking for books of story problems, or multiplication story problem books in google and amazon.

[moominmamma]

What sort of multiplication help do you need? It sounds like she's doing fine. You say she breezed through what was in the curriculum and picked up the concept easily. What was in the curriculum? Are you wanting to extend that further? If so, in what direction? Into memorization of multiplication facts, or into multi-digit multiplication, into related division equations, exploring the commutative property, applications to real-life problems, factoring, etc.?

miranda

[autumnvt]

There is a book that I am looking into that looks interesting called "The Best of Times" by Greg Tang. It is supposed to be a fun book for kids about "mastering the times tables though intuition and understanding" instead  of rote memorization...
 

[Lillian J]

I think that, at her age, I'd sort of back away from the idea of memorizing multiplication facts yet - she'll be picking them up just by messing around with them, and there's probably more satisfaction in that, in that she'll be seeing the connections as she goes and learning them in a more concrete way. But here are a few online resources:

http://sandradodd.com/timestables
http://www.multiplication.com/teach/classroom-games

http://www.multiplication.com/games

A cute book based on a fairy tale:
http://www.amazon.com/Multiplying-Menace-Revenge-Rumpelstiltskin-Adventure/dp/1570918902

Have fun - Lillian

 

[Mittsy]

We like to recite multiplication tables when we're doing things like playing catch, balancing, jumping rope.... We also make up poetry to go along with it.

[eirual]

You could also get into math journalling if she likes the language/communication aspect of things. Take a simple math sentence (3-2=1) and make a story out of it, or explain your thinking in pictures, numbers and words. Also, not stopping at just the right answer. As why/how and share other ways of doing the same thing (e.g. 5+7=12: some people would think "five and five is ten. Seven is two more than five, so I have to tack two onto the ten to get twelve", some might think "two sevens is fourteen, five is two less than seven, so I have to take two off of fourteen to get twelve" some would start at five and count on seven more using their fingers). There are lots of ways to get the same right answer, and sometimes talking about your different strategies can be fun and enlightening.

You could probably google "math journal prompts" for a list of language-based extensions.

[Hopefulmama]

Thanks to all! What a great list of suggestions!

[SweetSilver]

Originally Posted by autumnvt 

There is a book that I am looking into that looks interesting called "The Best of Times" by Greg Tang. It is supposed to be a fun book for kids about "mastering the times tables though intuition and understanding" instead  of rote memorization...
 

I've checked out a stack of Greg Tang's books from the library, and they do look like fun.  My almost-8yo was enjoying each as a puzzle.  She was able to skip pages and find the ones that interested her the most.  There is no writing involved, so that has an appeal all by itself.  Sometimes she enjoys writing, but sometimes thinking about a puzzle and talking about the solutions is enough.  With the book she looked through the most, you even need to figure out what the riddle is asking.  What I like best is that each puzzle to be solved can have multiple solutions, and can be approached from many different angles.  DD was sometimes multiplying, sometimes adding one group at a time, sometimes (like with 5's--easy breezy) she was able to count from memorization.  (She's been working with 5's for a long time.  I've been avoiding showing her math *tricks* and mathematic shorthand.  I much prefer for now that she work this stuff out in her head each time.  She's gotten to the point where some of this is automatically available for her now.)

Anyhow, I wanted to second this author's books.  We haven't gotten through all of them, but like Anno's Math Games, they are engaging, colorful, and fun.  

[MamaBookworm]

We play a card game, where two people each hold up a card to their forehead without looking at it themselves, but so the other person can see it. Then a third person calls out the product of those two numbers. The winner is the person who guesses first what card is on their forehead. 

Not a story, and you aren't really exploring the theory behind multiplication, but it is fun. After you master the basic facts, you can make the red cards be negative and the black cards be positive and play around with those as well.