Learn the Times Tables

                    
I was ecstatic to find this book from Ken Adams entitled "Help Your Child Learn the Times Table For Your 5-7 Year Old Child (Parents' Essentials) by Ken Adams on one of my library trips with the kiddies. You see... Math is a very structured subject and also can be very abstract, difficult to relate to in real life. The structure in Math is useful in that it is possible to spot patterns in the numbers and also to sequence the learning that is to build step-wise through related areas. This book further convinced my ways of going about teaching multiplication to my children were the right ones and the children were more than happy to work on them over and over again, as they thought we were playing for most of the time. Here's a brief review how cool this book is.

For example, counting is the foundation of number work and it is impossible to move on to addition and subtraction before counting and the knowledge of numbers are clear in a child's mind. 

The advantage of Maths is that step-wise building can make learning easy. The disadvantage is that the processes in Maths like multiplication, do not readily translate into what happens in real life. For the understanding of what a bus is in real life, an image of a bus comes into the mind when the word is said. For many young children, the image of 3X2 may not be as clear as to when it is presented like this. 

 

Moving from concrete to abstract 

This means from learning using real-life objects and progressing on to using number symbols. To cement the meanings of symbols, the real-life representations can be left attached to numbers for a time, as sums are completed or counting aids used like the number line. 

 

Isolating concepts 

This refers to helping a child to understand better by making the idea clear in the child's mind. This means that though interest in the subject is of huge importance for motivation and concentration, interest material should not be allowed to confuse a learner. For example, some books for early learners fail because they allow supposed interest material to clutter a page and obscure the principle that needs to be taught. 

 

Using a toy grasshopper or kangaroo, one can use it to hop along the pebble-numbered line to make it more interesting. You may ask, "How 

many hops to get to 8?"  

If you have the 100-square board/template like the one i have here, you may ask the child to colour the numbers the grasshopper or kangaroo has landed on... 

 

The above whiteboard template was purchased extremely cheap from September 21... one of my favourite haunts. I could just spend all day there! Point to note : If you wish to make a trip there yourself... you either come with a list of what you NEED to get or simply bring more moolah. Yes, they accept credit card. *evil wink*

If you're on a crusade for quick-tip-guides on how to teach or introduce the times tables to your children, this book is a must loan on your next library trip.