Times tables games

Kez100

For some reason, which I have yet to fathom, my son is struggling with his times tables. He knew most of them when he was in year 3 (now year 5) but since then it's fallen apart a bit and I need to help him 'catch up' again plus learn the nasty ones - 7's and 8's. He is happy to fill in the full times table squares and that's the way we will go, unless you can come up with some other ideas for me. Does anyone have any clever games to play - online, purchased or made up we can do?

Mojisola

The games may help in understanding the patterns in the times tables but, for learning them, there's no substitute for rote learning. A few minutes every day chanting them out loud with him with get them set solidly in his brain forever.

Kez100

Just the way we did it! Ta.

morganb

I've made a times tables square jigsaw ... don't know if that would help. Just the square chopped up; you can make them increasingly harder by chopping them up into more pieces.

LillyJ

When I was a kid I REALLY struggled with tables (and don't worry I ended up getting all As and A*s in my GCSEs and have now gone on to do a PhD) and my parents got me a cassette (probably a CD now!) with a story on with times tables in it. The story was about pirates and I listened to it every night when I was going to sleep. I learnt my times tables from that, and it was fun! I am sure they will still do such tapes. I did have another tape that had just chanting of the tables on it, but I can't learn that way so it didn't help.

eira

Coxhoe Primary School (Google it) has links to lots of fun sites for Literacy and Numeracy.There is also a fun (and free) times table computer game with a troll and snails and levels.Can't find it at the moment but it's set up like a 'proper' computer game. You have to get the tables right to move to another level

vixarooni

Best thing for me was to learn one set perfectly first.

I still know the 6's on the back of my hand. I have more trouble with the 3,4,5,7,8,9's then i do the 6's ha.

He might be like me! (god help him) but for me maths goes in one end and out of the other. I can be taught how to do long multiplication today, and do it well but i would need to be told again, tomorrow how to do it. Ask me now and i havent got a clue!

Best thing for me was just repeating and repeating it. Putting it to a rhyme and working out the patterns.

andyrules

The 7s and 8s are difficult. He really does need to know them inside out, ie as division as well.

You can go online - someone has mentioned coxhoe - there's also Primary games, also look on Primary Resources for resources;)

You can make some simple but effective games for him to practise - bingo is a good one - make some blank cards showing the multiples (answers ) of the table(s), then use cards (get someone to draw them out of a bag or just turn them over) showing the sum, eg 7x8. Make sure someone plays with him. Another one using the same idea, have a card showing multiples of one xtable and instead of drawing the cards, generate a number by throwing 2 dice, adding together the numbers and multiplying by whatever table you are doing. So if you had a card with multiples of 8 (16, 32, etc) and generated a 3 and a 5 with your dice, add them together (8) and multiply by 8 (64), if your card has 64 cover it. First to cover all wins. Test him often saying eg, how many 8s in 56? The 'follow me' cards on Primary Resources are good, he may use them at school and you can play with 2 people. Also, fiddly but good - make some xtables dominoes!

If I can find/remember more I'll come back!

HTH

bunty109

If you get a pack of cards and divide them in half; give half to your child and keep half. You both turn over a card at the same time and then you have to get your child to answer the multiplaction e.g 3 hearts x 10 clubs is 20.

My child's teacher said to only give them about 5 seconds to answer as this then prompts the child to think quickly.

mrcow

My brother struggled with tables. This was back in the '80s. So my Dad wrote a computer program on our BBC Micro which just used to chuck sums at him one after another and he'd type in the answer. If he got it wrong - the screen would play a flashing siren! The repetition of it really worked well. Obviously this was ages ago now......but there must be something similar that you could either downlaod or buy?

mrcow

The bbc have some games here


There are also some more here If he just keeps practising, he'll get there in the end.