Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The Evil They Call Multiplication

Multiplication. It was the beginning of the end for me in math. If you don't get multiplication solidly cemented in your brain then you are stuck in stutter mode for the rest of your math classes. That was me. Don't ask me why my multiplication tables were so tough, but they were. I could not get them to stick for anything.

When Big Guy had to learn his multiplication I knew exactly how to help him. He is a very auditory learner. We read those tables out loud over and over again until he had it down pat. Just hearing himself read it did the trick.

Now I am struggling trying to do the same thing for Little Guy. I know his learning style, but somehow it isn't as easy to pinpoint how to cement it. He is a very visual learner. He is also an auditory learner, but not listening to his own voice.

I realized this past week that he developed the crutch of skip counting in school and doesn't want to let it go. He gets frustrated with the fact that even though he is finding the right answer that I want him to be able to know the answer without thinking about it just as he knows his addition and subtraction facts.

This weekend I decided that maybe music was the answer. It also got me to thinking about the old Schoolhouse Rock videos from my childhood days that focused on the multiplication tables.

Do you remember these?



I will be trying these out this week. Have your kids had any educational hang ups? What have you tried?

2 comments:

Dr. Wifey said...

glad i'm not trying to teach multiplication! i would not even know where to start LOL good luck!

K Storm said...

This year Sissy will start with those and we may have to pull out our Schoolhouse Rock DVDs to reinforce that! That's how I learned the preamble in Jr High. Most of us sang it to our teacher, but had to insert a phrase at the beginning that gets skipped in the schoolhouse rock version.