How to teach the CONCEPT of multiplication

[ArribaArribaAndaleAndale]

I understand the tables themselves need to be memorized by repetition, but do you have any practical creative ideas to teach a 6 year old the actual concept of multiplication? Cheers all.

i do '2 lots of' and use pennies or buttons, then '3 lots of'

is that what you mean?

Coins: line htem up in rows of 1/2/5/10, whatever. You can also use 2p vs 1p coins. If it's their pocket money that will focus their minds too, lol.
Pairs of shoes (for 2x table)
Fingers on hands (for 5 x table)
10p making a pound as above

Anything that comes in pairs or packets of a fixed number can be useful.

We used chocolate buttons.

Eg. Put down 12 buttons. Group them into two lots of six. Write that as a multiplaction sum, 2 x 6, then six groups of two, and write 6 x 2.

Then then four groups of three, 4 x 3 ....., and so on.

Is that what you mean?

And the other thing we did was stress that multiplication tables are speedy ways of counting, ie. hopping (in groups, over numbers) along a number line, like a frog, or a train that doesn't stop at all the stations, I think they do that at school.

teach it as repeated addition

2 + 2+2+2 is 4 sets of 2 is 4 times 2

I need help with this too. My 5yr old is baffled about counting in 2s. We have a bit of an extra problem in that I can't really use much verbal explanation (language problem) - I need to show rather than tell.
She's not the sort of child to just do as she's told - she has to know why and what the purpose is.
I've tried coloured counters, grouping them etc, but she doesn't get why we aren't counting in 1s.
E.g:
When telling her that it's because "it's quick" to count these 10 counters in 2s, she merely rolls her eyes and demonstrates just how super-quick she can count in 1s. Hmmm.

Anyone got some better ideas?

x posted - will try the chocolate buttons & frog-hopping number line
thanks

may be for later on, but have a look at the vids in here for gridding and chunking methods

How about using objects that inherently have two (or more) of something else? Like a person has two hands, so two people have 4 hands etc? A cat has 4 legs so 2 cats have 4 legs Or packets that have multiple items in?

Eggs in a box work well, so does a large bar of chocolate broken into different size pieces so you can talk about a block being 4 lots of 2, or 2 lots of 4 etc.

:o

So many activities involving chocolate... I could only teach subtraction with that!

Sorry about that .
Great suggestions everyone. Very helpful.

sharing out things works well as well.
(also good for division)

give each person a quantity of something (toys, buttons, blocks whatever)

count how many people

eg xx people each have xxx whatever

how many in total
discuss
groups of people
groups of objects

how many in each

one person has how many objects>
two people have xxxx objects
three people have ..... etc
four.....

count up the objects in groups

When my DS was starting, he'd see a sum like

4 x 3 =

And he'd say "4 three times". I don't know if this is what he was taught at school, but it seemed to help him understand what he was trying to work out.

Also, once you it's time to memorise, have a look at Dr Lynne Gregorio's Multiplication Facts Strategy article (on my blog) which shows some tricks which can be used so that your child only has to really memorise 6x7 and 7x7.

Use sweets

Get 3 or 4 or 5 people (teddies or dollies) round a table give each of them 2 sweets

Ask how many sweets there are?

Take 2 away (eat them) how many now?

Add some people & some sweets

Just keep on at it

Try with 4's if she still think she can count faster

Any suggestions for how you can help DD memorise them?

She has a particularly bad memory.

not sure it'd help your DD specifically, but I'll post for anyone who's interested.

I made a game for my DSDs based on find the pair, you make 48 little cards with numbers on one side - 4 each of 2-12, 2 each of 0 and 1.

lay them all out face down, DC has to pick any 2 cards and has 1 guess (i.e. not allowed to keep guessing randomly) to tell you the product. if it's right they keep the cards, if it's wrong they turn them back over, then they pick another pair. keep going until all cards are gone. time each attempt as hopefully it'll get shorter :)

they can also play a competitive version against another child (get another go if they get it right, otherwise it's next player's go), but either way you need somebody as an answer-checker.

worked wonders for my DSDs anyway!

This game (which sounds good) would help with recall - not memorisation.

I think the best way is to draw a 10 by 10 table, with one cell for each sum (so top left corner is 1x1 and bottom corner is 10 x 10). Then get her (with help) to work out each number. Do this regularly and she will either learn it or if her memory is bad work out tricks herself

I do stairs - each time I do steps I start a different table

cuisinairre rods

I used to make a big grid, say 5 squares by 10 squares and tell DD to cound them. She would be on about "4" and I would say "50". MY DD is really competitive so she wanted to know how I did that so fast. So we talked about it and she realised that mutilpying was not harder but easier than counting each square.

Lots of kids don't like math because they thinkit is hard. If you show them it actually makes something easier then that might inspire them.