Times tables - a stupid question

[janinlondon]

When you practice times tables with your kids, do you do the "two times tables" as in two times one, two times two, two times three.....or do you do one times two, two times two, three times two? Sorry - completely dumb but I don't want to do it the wrong way. If there is a wrong way!

I do... one times two is.... two times two is

I think when I did them with DS (now 11) that I did a mixture of both - after all the answer is the same either way round!! Hope this helps.

Now you see, that's what I was doing, but then I thought, hey JIL, that's actually not a two times table, that's a times two table. Which is where I needed a nice lie down.

There isn't a wrong way. The answer is the same whichever way you do them.

You should however do them randomly too, so your child doesn't just know them in order. Many children claim to know their tables, but cannot actually answer a question if taken out of order, e.g. what's 5 x6. They could only get that answer if they've already gone through 1x6, 2x6, 3x6, etc.

It's a good idea to do them both ways, as it actually takes some children a while to realise that 2x3 = 3x2.
You can also try them with 'division facts' too - two divided by two is one,four divided by two is two,etc

Okay I've been on a few websites now, and they all do times two rather than two times, so that's how we're going to learn them. They have to be chanted in class you see. Don't want my kid to be the one chanting out of sequence and in a world of her own - she does enough of that sort of glazed over stuff without my help!

I'm with Mars and the rest. I do loads of random tables questions - ds1 usually gets several on the way to school each day. We also do a written "test" every other evening because ds1 still sometimes writes his numbers the wrong way round. For the first week of a timetable the school weekly test is "in order" (ie 1 x2, 2 x 2 etc), but then the second week is jumbled up, and after we've done 3 or 4 then we have a consolidation week (random test of all tables learnt to date).

As far as I understand how our school works it sounds as if he will have weekly tables tests for about 2 or 3 years.