[3girls1boy]

My 4th grader and my 7th grader (not home schooled) do not know their multiplication facts as well as I think they should. I want to concentrate on that over the Winter Break.

Anybody have some tried and true methods?

 

[Jenne]

I like the way TouchMath teaches it. Count by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, 10s. That's it. Then practice and practice. It makes multiplying then a cinch. When I was teaching we would choose a number and count by it while lining up. In several weeks my kids knew their "facts" without much effort. You don't actually have to "memorize" the tables then once you know the pattern.

Hope that helps.

Happy Holidays,

Jenne

 

[daylily]

I'm assuming they understand the concept behind multiplication.

Here's an easy trick for remembering the nine times tables: The answer is always a sum of nine: 9x9=81; 8+1=9

6x9=54; 5+4=9 etc.

It works every time.

I agree that counting by 4's or 7's or whatever also helps. During dd's calendar period during her math lesson, she had to tell me, "how many days in one week?" Two weeks? Three weeks?--up to 10 weeks. Then she learned her 7 times tables in a snap.

 

[mama_kass]

We play multiplication war. You play it the same way that you play the card game war except multiply as you go. it's fun! We make all the face cards 10 but you can make them whatever you want. DS loves this game.

 

[JavaFinch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daylily I'm assuming they understand the concept behind multiplication. Here's an easy trick for remembering the nine times tables: The answer is always a sum of nine: 9x9=81; 8+1=9 6x9=54; 5+4=9 etc. It works every time. I agree that counting by 4's or 7's or whatever also helps. During dd's calendar period during her math lesson, she had to tell me, "how many days in one week?" Two weeks? Three weeks?--up to 10 weeks. Then she learned her 7 times tables in a snap.

Interesting. You know, I learned a similar method - whatever you're multiplying 9 by, take one away and then add up to nine (well, maybe that's the same way, just looking at it a bit different)

So 9x6 = 6-1= 5 for the first #, add up from 5 to get to nine = 4, so answer 54

Otherwise, my only suggestion is to use car time to practice. It's a good time with not much else to do - and with two kids you could make a game out of it.

 

[reeseccup]

TimesTales, Trigger Memory Systems-Education Through Imagination...Upper Times Tables in Under An Hour

We're going to try this today during youngests nap time. I'll report back how it works for us.

 

[reeseccup]

REVIEW

Wow, that was interesting!! My ds is almost 13 so the story line seemed "lame" to him, but i kept encouraging him to have an open mind and look at it like he's reading a story to his sister. (after a while of his protesting about how childish it was and awwwww comeone moms) and he got past the youngish story, he was amaized about how well he retained the information to the story problems.

after it was done i retested his upper times tables and he got all answers right at a better speed than his pretest. He felt weird at first admitting that when those problems came up that the first thing that popped into his mind were the images from the story and then the story popped into his mind and the answer was obvious to him.

IT DOES WORK!!

NOW he has admited it worked for him and wants to do the division one and won't protest the story line lol, so that ought to take a lot shorter. I didn't keep track of how long it took us just because we had distractions, along with the

"how stupid" protests, but I'd say it's very possible to learn this in an hour or less.

He did say that he wished he had this available when he was learning times tables and back then he more than likely wouldn't have thought it was lame.

I'm keeping this around for my other 2 for sure