My fiance and I are trying to teach my daughter her times tables. We have had her write them alot of times?

Question

repeat them over again verbaly but she is still not getting it. How can I get through to her that she needs to care about her education? How can I get her to learn her times tables? All she does is cry when I tell her we are about to work on times tables she is nine and going to the fourth grade next year in texas.

Answer 1

Oh my, been there done that! Try the animated video "Schoolhouse Rock" that focuses on multiplication, singing a song for every number.  Your librarian may be able to suggest other materials as well. I know there is at least one cassette produced also using songs to help memorize the times tables.

Answer 2

set the standard/routine...at this time of the day we sit down and learn...maybe not the time tables everyday, but several times a week...other times, learn something that might not be taught in school....and then allow her to come up with activities for you all to do sometimes after the sessions...and maybe she will come to realize that it is necessary to do the educational stuff, but there will still be plenty of time to do the fun stuff...good luck

Answer 3

Sounds like you're pushing her tooooooo hard.  This drilling is very boring and you could destroy her love of learning.

Is there a Kumon near you - it's a kind of home study for children.  

Remember.  You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

That means, you can give the child all the knowledge the child needs, but you can't make the child learn it.

Answer 4

You need to make a game out of it how about some flash cards, Go here for some fun games on line

http://www.multiplication.com/interactiv...

Answer 5

Some kids don't get math.  It's numbers, not letters and their minds just don't work that way.  

Try to do it differently.  Try to teach her visually.  Don't call them "times tables" think of something else.  She's frustrated more because she's got a mental block and that is frustrating.  

You say she doesn't care about her education but is the Times tables the only thing she doesn't care about?

Answer 6

It probably makes no sense to her, so verbally and visually multiplication will be harder to learn. I like the block suggestion, cross stitch is another visual hobby. the best thing for multiplication for my kids was cooking. When they are doubling recipes they are doing math without even thinking about it. When they are setting out plates, we'll say, we have twice as many people coming over for dinner, instead of three, we have six. Or, we have three friends over for playtime, everyone gets four cookies, that's twelve. Just put math into every day life and let her get some experience with it so it makes sense. Ask her, if (fiance), you and I each get two cookies, how many should be get out? Then praise praise praise her when she counts "Two, four, six" say "That's multiplication, you just did three times two!"

Let her do online games at this website

http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/

and teach using these easy forms

(edit to add) Oh, and make sure that you are teaching the basics. Multiplication is nothing more than easy addition. You are basically adding groups of numbers. So she should understand grouping first. If you add ten to ten, that's ten two times, and twenty. Start with teaching and mastering times one, times two, times five and times ten. Those are the easiest concepts, and the others are much more difficult. Once she has those mastered, THEN move on to the alternative numbers. Use m&m's, group them by small numbers, and let her add them, let her SEE that it's just addition. Because right now I think she's breeding a sense of hate for math, she thinks she can't do it, and that sense of "I'm stupid so why bother being educated" is going to stick with her all through school, when probably what's happened is that no one has ever explained that it's just grouping and addition. My son had this same problem, modern curricula for kids just leaves so many gaps open. PLEASE tell her constantly how smart you think she is, how hard she's trying and how much you appreciate it, instead of verbalizing that she doesn't care. Just another 2¢ of mine. Good luck and God bless.

Answer 7

Try and make it fun, and keep it simple.

The key to maths is to understand and not just know.

You can force the answers into her head but she may not understand how you got them.

Explain in her own language how to times table works and try and get her to do simple ones to demonstrate.

A good way of teaching is really to explain. Eg:

Times tables works by taking a number and getting more of them.

3 x 3 , they are asking for a '3'  and three more of them, so you take the three and add two more.

3 (x1) + 3 (x2)  + 3 (x3) = 9

Then try some other examples:

4 x 5    we want four 5's

5 +  5 +  5 +  5       = 20

(x1)  (x2) (x3) (x4)

Good luck!

Answer 8

Try turning it into a game. You can buy some fun times table games at educational stores. The only way to make her want to learn, is to make it fun. If you are drilling her till she cries, you are ruining it for her and frustrating her. She probably feels like a failure when you get frustrated with her. Keep it light and fun.

There are some tricks you can learn with times tables. Ask your teacher about learning nines using your fingers. If she doesn't know the trick, you can e mail me and I'll explain it to you.

[e-mail].

Good luck!

Answer 9

She may be a visual learner. Get beans........put them on the table and let her put 4 piles of beans...in each pile put 5 beans...then let her count them.....now tell her 4 x 5 is what? Help her get the idea behind the times table NOT just ...ok so 4 x 5 is 20..why?... just because that's so. It might help her alot....repeating them over and over verbally isn't achieving anything but making you irritable and her frustrated and feeling dumb. Writing them over and over isn't helping her either...she's just writing numbers. You need to help her understand why...once she gets the concept behind it then she'll get better...also, let her use her fingers and count to 5 four times to get the number. Let her write tally marks on paper to get the number. Going into 4th grade and doing these things are ok....she just needs to get the confidence built up and she'll be good.

Oh, she is 9.....9 year olds don't have the concept of caring about their education yet.  One more thing....have alot of patience...it's frustrating to not understand something yet know you are expected to know it!

Answer 10

Everyone does not learn by repetition, either written or verbal, and your daughter is probably very frustrated at this point because she's blocked on this, which is why she gets upset when she knows she has to work on them. My adult students handle it with things other than tears, but often react the same way when they know it's a "math day" : they think they can't do math and immediately get frustrated and irritable.

I was taught my times tables kinesthetically because I couldn't learn them any other way. Here's what my mom did.

Get a bunch of blocks that are the same size and shape. Not too big and you'll need a lot of them.Teaching supply stores usually have these.

Let's say we're trying to do the times tables of three, because that's easy to explain

With this method the number of blocks in a row is the first number in the times table, and the number of rows is the second number.

Set out three blocks, or 3x1

Every time you go to another table of three, lay another row of three blocks underneath. Times two -- two rows of three. Times four -- four rows of three.

The answer, of course, is the number of blocks that are laid down.

Have her start doing them as you call them out: 4 times 6 and she lays out six rows of four blocks each.

This may seem like she's counting for the answer and she will probably do that at first, but really with some kids it helps them see the relationships between the numbers and how times tables actually "work" -- because the "block" for 6*4 looks the same as 4*6, just turned on its side!

I hope that helps! Good luck to your daughter.