That’s what we are up to these days. Times tables. What better way to practice them than playing it as a game?
I don’t know the source but Adi came up with this easy peasy game that we play when we get even 2 minutes break between the chores.
Take 1 set of playing cards and separate the numbers from non-numbers (Ace/King/Queen/Jack).
We need only the number cards for this game.
Divide the number cards between the two players.
As player 1 says “Go” both players have to take out the first card from their stack and place it on the floor.
Whoever says the answer for the multiply of the two numbers on the floor earns the two cards.
The game repeats until one of the player is left with no cards.
From 1 set of cards each player will get around 18 cards each and the game will get over in less than 5 minutes.
Isn’t practicing 25+ multiplication numbers in less than 5 minutes cool? that too in a fun way without getting onto each other’s nerves?
The keep the game lively you shouldn’t let the kid say all answers. You should also win some cards by pretending to answer them. May be you can answer the 2s, 5s and 10s tables and leave the difficult ones to them. Remember to pretend and keep a sad face when you fail to answer 🙂 We play it like the rapid fire rounds in Quiz. This enables the kid to say the answers faster.
This game will help to practice 2s to 10s times tables.
Other multiplication tricks:
1. I have noticed that kids learn 2, 5 and 10 times table pretty faster so I taught Adi to do 7×6 as 7×5 and then add 7 to the answer. Anytime you get two numbers to multiply, first get to the nearest 5 or 10 and then add up the remaining.
2. Look at this video for 9 tables trick
3. The other trick for 9 tables is that the digits in tens place increase by one and the digits in ones place decrease by one. See its like 09, 18, 27,36, 45, 56…
4. For tables greater than 10, its easier to first do the 10s table and then add it up to the remaining number.
For ex: 14*4 can be done as (10*4)+(4*4) = 40+16 = 56
got it?
Hope this helps someone someday..
Happy learning !!!!!
Between my littles and me 