Times Tables Update!

I am in awe of how well the Times Tables the Fun Way has worked for Simon! On December 28th, we opened the book for the first time. He took the pre-test that is in the back of the book. There are 48 problems and they have 6 minutes to answer as many as possible. Simon answered 9 problems and only got 5 of them correct.

Fast forward to today. We took the post-test today. It is the same test, and again he had 6 minutes to complete as many problems as possible. This time Simon answered 32 problems and he got 31 of them correct!! Is that not amazing??? I prompted him a couple of times because he was struggling and asking for help, but that does not take away from the fact that he did so much better after just 3 weeks.

We did not use this book every day over the three weeks, nor did we do much else mathwise during that time. Mostly we worked through all the stories the first week at bedtime, and then periodically over the next two weeks we did review of the stories and I would “quiz” him at oddball times (e.g, in the car, out of the blue I would say, “Hey Simon, what’s 3 x 7?”).

We reviewed the stories again last night before bed, and did the post-test at 4 o’clock today without any review.

Yippee!

January 18, 2007 | Filed Under Learning | 1 Comment 

Times Tables the Fun Way (for visual spatial learners)

Last year, Simon’s (ds 9) reading tutor recommended this book for him to learn his times tables. She said he is GREAT at remembering little tricks and stories, and that this book would be perfect. I’ve been eyeballing it at Amazon ever since, and I finally went ahead and got it last week.

We can’t really move on to division until he masters multiplication. However, since he has visual processing issues, learning math facts doesn’t come easy. He aces any conceptual math problems, but really struggles with the simple stuff.

This book has been great! We’ve been using it for about a week now, and we are up to the sixes. We work on it a little bit each night before bed (they recommend doing it before bed so it can soak in overnight, then we review the next night and move on). For anyone who doesn’t think visually, these stories would seem very silly and cumbersome to learn. However, he remembers all the little details of the stories once the picture is etched in his mind. Most importantly, if I say to him, “Hey Simon, what is 6×6?” He’ll answer “36!” Hooray.

January 2, 2007 | Filed Under Learning | 7 Comments