How did your dc learn their tables?

[crazygracieuk]

I need to help ds1 in year 5 and dd in year 3 perfect their tables?
In ds1's case he can say them in order or work them out but can't do the higher ones randomly.
In dd's case she knows 2x 3x 5x 10x and needs to learn the others.
The evil mummy in me thinks start teaching them the high ones together because dd will want to outdo ds1 and learn them fast but the rational mummy side of me wouldn't take advantage of her competitiveness.

They are both top groups but are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to confidence. Dd needs lots of reassurance while ds1 loves maths.

For us it was learning by rote, very, very regular drilling, then throwing random questions at them.

Times tables music CD - every time we go in the car it's on. Done wonders for my boy - and he actually enjoys singing along. Check out the reviews on Amazon for which one to buy.

This is interesting because schools have different methods now. I like your idea of competition! I would favourite learning by rote, but explaining the constancy of maths to get the random answers out! Will watch with interest for others experience.

I made a card game for my DSDs.

Take 48 small blank cards and write numbers on one side of them so you have 4 each of the numbers 2-12, and 2 each of 0 and 1.

Lay all cards out face down. DC picks up any 2 cards and tells you the product of the numbers on them. They only get one guess. If it's right they keep the cards, if it's wrong they turn them back over. Then they pick another 2 cards.

Keep going until all cards are gone. You can time it and with practise the time should get shorter.

You can do it as a two player game, so if DS gets the right answer he gets another go, if it's wrong it is DD's go, and the player with most cards at the end wins.

HTH :)

sorry to hijack but I just wondered what age your dcs were when they started to learn their tables? Did you wait until they did them at school?

Play 'whizbang' - basically count and when you are doing a X-table the answer is whizzbang for all the multiples of the table

eg 5x table . 1,2,3,4,whizzbang, 6,7,8,9,whizzbang etc, etc.

Hope that makes sense.

There is also a game called 24 really fun

DDs school set weekly tests Primary 2 & P3 rather like Kumon.
starting with 2/5/10 x tables
worksheets of random 60 multiplication sums per x table to be answered in 3 minutes.
Then moved onto 3/4/9x
Then 7/8 x
children had to score 95% before being moved on to the next x table.

Once all x tables were covered children had 3 minutes 60 questions mixed multiplication worksheets.
Finally in Primary 3 same timed exercise was done as division to reinforce x tables.
i.e worksheets would be
() divided by 12 = 4

To practise we printed off free downloadables from the internet and did one worksheet nightly as a family challenge with forfeits.

Initially many parents complained about the timing aspect but by end of primary 3 all the children had very good rapid recall.

www.bigbrainz.com/

I use lots of different games/methods - we don't learn them in order - ever. They start off answering questions with the answer sheet in front of them until they become a little more familiar with the combinations. We do a one minute challenge with flashcards - works for dd but not ds who gets stressed by the timer.
We offer minute for minute rewards One minute times tables for one minute TV. Normally I don't like to reward for school work but learning by rote is dull and it has to be done so by any means necessary.
We use times table cd, Tutpup.co.uk to play against other children around the world.
We learn one new one at a time then I continue to randomly check the ones they are supposed to know.

So basically we approach it using variety and listening to their cries of this is boring and moving on to something else. They have good memories so I think it is pretty easy for them to get it.

We used to be given a 10 by 10 grid and the teacher would give numbers between 1 and 10 in random order along the top and left. You then multiplied the corresponding numbers for each square. Eg if the numbers along the top were 1, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and along the left from top to bottom were 2,4,6,8,10,9,7,5,3,1 then the top row would be 2x1, 2x2, 2x3 etc.

Everyone was given a time to complete it and once you got about 90% in that time you had 30 seconds knocked off.

This way your daughter could compete against herself to be quicker and quicker.

Thank you everyone. I will definitely be trying some of your methods and hopefully see some results.

Recommend times table CD that I got through Amazon.

My 4 years and 5 months is learning alongside his sister - 6 years - in the car when we are out. Drives me mad but they laugh along to it.

It states the tables twice through to disco or rap music, on the third time it leaves out the answer and they have to shout it.

baffledmum do you know which cd it was you bought?

Will check and come back to you asap. It's in the car at the moment and it's too cold to pop out. Will sort by Tues.

itunes.apple.com/gb/album/sing-your-times-tables-with/id201640562