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Multiplication can be difficult for children and parents, but it’s critical for math skills. Different techniques work for different children, such as creating a multiplication table or skip counting. Analyzing patterns and using music can also help. Encouragement and perseverance are key.
Learning multiplication can be very difficult for many children and can pose a problem for parents trying to help them learn, who may have forgotten how they learned themselves. However, a solid understanding of multiplication facts is critical to a child’s ability to easily acquire subsequent math skills that will build on these foundations.
There are many different techniques for teaching multiplication facts and it should be kept in mind that none are meant to be a generic approach. Different children learn in different ways and what might seem easy for one child may be very difficult for another. One of the most important things you can do to help teach your child about multiplication factors is to stay encouraging and open throughout the process. If one technique doesn’t seem to work, experiment with others until you find something that works for your child.
One of the classic ways to start teaching the facts of multiplication is to write a simple multiplication table. This gives your child an easy visual aid and something to study to look for patterns. Most people have seen a multiplication table at some point, but if you haven’t, it’s quite simple to create one. First create a grid, then write each number from one to whatever you’re working up – ten or twelve are good numbers to start with – along the top, and then do the same along the left side. Now write the products of each combination along the axis. So in row 2, for example, you would have 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24. This table will be a valuable resource for your child and having them actually write it themselves with your help it can help them further, as writing things down helps many people retain information.
Another way to teach multiplication facts is to treat each row of that multiplication table as a whole set in and of itself. People often refer to this technique as “skip counting,” and it can be a great way for your child to familiarize themselves with multiples in more manageable chunks. For example, learning the row of 5s would be a matter of learning the numbers 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55 and 60. So rather than tackling the entire table, your child would first learn that 5 x 5 is 25 and 5 x 8 is 40, and so on for each product.
These types of sets can be set to a tune, for an even more effective way to teach multiplication facts. Schoolhouse Rock has a popular multiplication song, but you can feel free to come up with your own tune to set up your times tables. Many children find that things set to music are much easier to remember than things learned by reading or hearing as ordinary words. A melody gives information a context that the child can hold on to when trying to remember, and it can be that extra push the child needs to make his multiplication data click into place.
Analyzing patterns and looking for interesting shortcuts is another good tactic for learning multiplication facts. Many children find it particularly easy to learn their multiples of fives, because they alternate between ending up with a five and a zero. Others like multiples of eleven, as they are very common for smaller numbers, being so closely related to multiples of ten. Understanding that multiples of nine increase by one instead of ten and decrease by one instead of one each column of the multiplication table is another example of this type of pattern finding. There are many, many little patterns like this, and encouraging your child to play with their multiplication table to figure out some of them for themselves can work wonders in learning the facts of multiplication.
The most important thing is not to give up. Everyone learns at their own pace and in their own way. Even though your child may struggle for a while, if you persevere and keep working to find the appropriate technique to teach him, the day will come when he will have his first big breakthrough, and from then on things will seem to flow much easier. and before you know it they will have a great understanding of basic multiplication facts.
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