More Multiplication Practice

We’re still drilling multiplication facts. (It seems this is going to take a while.) I’m constantly saying out of the blue, “Count by eights!” or “What’s 9 x 7?” It’s as much work for me to remember to review it as it is for Sprite to learn the facts.

This is a book I bought from Amazon —Math Games to Master Basic Skills: Multiplication & Division.  Sure, I could find or make my own bingo charts and times tables cards, but it’s so easy to have it all in a clean format, ready to copy and use.  (I wrote a review for the book at Amazon, so I won’t go into that here.)

This latest lesson was X7 and X9 facts.

• I gave Sprite all the products and had her divide them into two stacks — multiples of 7 and multiples of 9.
• Then I had her order the products and skip count, reading them outloud. She came up with her own variation — reading in a low voice for the smaller numbers, and progressively raising her voice as the numbers got larger. It was quite silly, but anything that makes math fun is okay with me.
• I asked her why 63 could be found in both rows. She nailed it!
• Then I randomly pointed at products and had her tell me the math problem. We discussed the whole 9 x 8 is the same as 8 x 9 issue.
• To top it all off, we played TWO board games from the NC Math site. I laminated them so we could use Vis-a-vis pens to mark our spots instead of using paper markers. Sprite always loves using those pens, and I like to use lots of variety to keep math fun.