Learning Timestables with Moomintroll

Over the holidays Moomintroll and I worked our way through the book "Multiplication Facts in Seven Days" (by Dr Carl Seltzer).  It seems like quite a nice system to learn the tables from 0-9.  We filled in a grid first with what we knew, and used the caculator for the rest.  We then drew some multiplications as boxes on grid paper (eg. 2x5 is a box 2 across and 5 down).  This was good to show that 2x5 and 5x2 give the same size box, just turned sideways, both with 10 squares within them.  It also showed that anything times zero is zero - you can't draw a box!  And anything times one is the same number.

As a result, we crossed from our table all the x0 and x1 results, as well as the repeats that were reversed.  It felt like progress already!

The first day of facts was the squares - so we highlighted them in red.  It was good to practise with the Honey Cards Snorkmaiden had made from Life of Fred.

The grid paper was useful to draw the squares, and see that in fact they really were square boxes.  Once she felt ready, Moomintroll worked through the 50 questions on squares from the book, using her times table sheet to help her.

Day 2 focused on the seven 2 times facts.  Day 3 had four 5 times facts.  Day 4 had six 3 times facts.  Day 5 had five 4 times facts.  Day six had the remaining six 6, 7 and 8 times facts.  Day seven was revision.

We've all been going over them fairly regularly.  Tan and Moomintroll drew a heat map to see how it was going.  Still some sticky facts in red to keep working at!  There is also a great site called www.multiplication.com that has a lot of free games, and a mnemonic system that uses pictures and stories to help the facts stick.