photo credit-multiplication.com
Multiplication tables (as well as most other math facts) have been a hard go for Buddy Boy. His third grade class started on the "8's" and "9's" back in March, and he still hadn't gotten them down by the end of the school year. Liz worked with him, his teachers tried various strategies, but nothing seemed to work. Every time Buddy Boy had a problem, he had to stop and sequentially add things, or if he was able to remember a rule, he would take minutes to painstakingly work through it step by step.
So near the end of school Liz went searching for a new approach, and as soon as school was out, she was ready with some workbooks. Two of the books were variations on regular math workbooks, but one of them was decidedly different. This one, "Memorize in Minutes: The Times Tables" looked rather silly, and I didn't hold out much hope for it.
The book has silly pictures (complete with silly stories for each one) to teach the times tables. The times table above is "8 x 8 = 64", and down below it says "skate x skate = sticky floor". The accompanying story describes how two skaters went skating and got stuck to a sticky floor, which was covered with a gooey, sticky, substance. Huh? How was a series of stories going to get Buddy Boy to remember his multiplication tables? Even if he did, I figured it wouldn't save him any time over what he was already doing.
It worked.
What couldn't be accomplished in months was virtually all memorized in a week. Buddy Boy and Liz worked their way through the "8's" and "9's" in a week, and are going back to some of the other numbers. Buddy Boy demonstrated his now fairly rapid firing off of various multiplication facts. It was truly amazing. What had before taken minutes now took about 2 seconds each. I was impressed.
So if you're having similar issues, this might be something you want to look at. The website's here. We paid for our book, and have no financial interest in this product. But I'm glad that someone thought "outside the box" on this one, and put this together.
