What questions should you ask your children to help them remember and learn their tables?

To test our children when learning multiplication tables we usually ask questions all beginning with the word ‘WHAT’.

For example:

What is 6 x 8?

What is 9 x 6?

It seems obvious that asking ‘WHAT’ this is the right thing to ask.

It is ‘a’ right thing to ask, however, there is another question, a very powerful question that can be asked that will aid and massively increase children’s ability in remembering their multiplication tables.

If you want to be the best in life then the thing to do is to learn from those people who are the best at at that thing. We do not need to reinvent the wheel all we need to do is find and copy outstanding people, role models, and learn from what they do.

So if you want to remember something why not use as your role model the very best people that there at remembering. Who are these people? You’ve probably seen these people on TV, they are the memory champions, such as Dominic O’Brian, those who can seemingly effortlessly remember dates, places, people, countless facts, massive lists of objects.

How do they do it and can we learn from them and apply that knowledge to help our children to remember their tables? You bet we can and in a very easy way that will make a huge difference!

Location is the answer!

The way these champions remember is to link the facts, objects etc to a location, to a place. They imagine the fact or object to be at a particular location and if they have to remember a sequence they turn that sequence into a sequence of places or a journey.

These experts then remember the locations or journey and this enables them to recall all those facts.

When learning tables in The Learning Well and Times Table Maths.com, we do not rote learn as most people do because multiplication tables are not learned well this way. If you ask a child a multiplication table, very often the response is to go through all the multiplication tables from the beginning until they get to the one being asked. Have you seen this? We have on countless occasions.

What is needed instead is an instant recall method.

We use the idea of locations and places to help children remember in an instant, in a split second.

So we use printable math sheets that we call Memory Sheets and place them in various locations. Children then remember the location and their multiplication tables easily and with instant recall.

So, coming back to this idea of questions, we said that ‘WHAT’ was ‘a’ right question and now there is another question, a very powerful question to ask, and that is ‘WHERE’?

For your children to learn their tables, questions are definitely the answer to multiplication tables, but not just WHAT, also the very powerful question linked to the idea of location and that is; WHERE?

Children using this method have achieved outstanding results with minimum effort and so can yours! Why not have a look at the rest of the Blog and our free reports to see more on this and why it is so powerful and helping children learn their tables.

What activities can you encourage your children to do to help them stay focused on their times tables?

Put simply what can you do when you are at home and want to help your children with their maths and multiplication tables and maintain their concentration, focus and energy at the same time?

The answer is simple and believe it or not you have the necessary learning resources to help your children right at your fingertips. What resources?

When they are learning maths and their multiplication tables get your children to stand up and move about and that way they will be more focused, full of energy and their concentration will be more likely to be maintained. Sounds too simple? Too good to be true? Surely they should be sitting down and concentrating!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, Dr Max Vercruyssen of the University of South Carolina doesn’t think so. He has found that the way a person positions their body has a marked affect on their ability to learn and retain focus. He therefore recommends that amongst the many learning resources available that standing is used to improve learning.

Two things help your children when standing and moving. First the blood and oxygen flow to the brain increases significantly and secondly the psychological affect on the child is to make them much more alert with the brain then learning more.

What activities can your children undertake when standing and moving about so that their concentration is maintained and they better learn their maths and multiplication tables? To enable your children to learn in this way and get the best from learning whilst moving ‘The Learning Well’ recommends children use printable maths and printable multiplication tables that are called Memory Sheets.

These Memory Sheets have the maths questions and answers or multiplication tables questions and answers on them and are printed out or copied.

The Memory Sheets are then displayed in different places and locations around your home and the combination of location, color, images and the questions and answers help your children remember the answers. The beauty of it all is this; the children move about the house having great fun linking the locations with the questions and the answers.

What happens when you have a difficult question, say multiplication tables that are really hard? The answer is to put them somewhere silly and your children will laugh and remember the answers, for example on the toilet seat or the ceiling.

All this standing and moving massively helps your children’s concentration and is great fun, it keeps boredom away, and results in a great improvement in your children’s ability to learn their maths and times tables or multiplication tables. Very soon know the answers to the questions on the Memory Sheets and all without rote learning.

Surely movement is to do with physical education or sports and not maths!

When children are moving about they are happy.

Children therefore love to move and are always in perpetual motion whenever they have the choice. Do your children just sit still unless they have to?

The problem with Maths is that it is mostly learned by sitting still with children trying to get the number work into their heads whilst at the same time doing something that is not natural to them .i.e. being still.

Being still is therefore not the best way to learn especially for children, so what is?

Motion creates emotion and if you move about it can change how you feel, in children’s case it makes them happy and if children are happy they are much more likely to be motivated to work harder and for longer.

If you could find a way of bringing movement into learning maths this would improve motivation and therefore learning and greatly enhance the speed at which children learn.

The question arises how on Earth can movement be applied to the learning of maths?

In fact there is a way and I want to give you an example using multiplication tables.

As we are all aware the usual way that children are taught tables is to get them to sit still and cram the tables into their minds by using rote learning.

For example with the 3times table; 1×3 is 3, 2×3 is 6, 3×3 is 9, right up to 12×3 is 36.

The Learning Well has designed a system which is the simplest, easiest most efficient way of learning the tables and it uses movement. Because it involves movement it therefore creates motivation and a willingness to learn.

The system is based on Memory Sheets.

The sheets are placed by the children around the home in different locations. The locations are then revisited on many occasions in order to learn the tables.

More difficult tables are put in more unusual places, often somewhere that will cause children to laugh, for example the toilet.

strong>This makes the tables more fun to learn and they are therefore more memorable.

If your children are not sure of the tables when you test them they just go back and have a look again.

So in the process of walking around the home and having a look at the tables; your child is moving, having fun, being motivated and this makes learning much easier.

Remember, motion creates emotion. If you use this principle linking motion, movement and having fun to maths then the end result is instant learning of the tables. Other areas of maths can be learned in a similar way.

To learn more on Maths and Movement why not have a look at other areas of this Blog and The Learning Well Blog.

This is not the best way to learn multiplication tables. There is a far easier way that uses your children’s minds just like a camera so that they can recall the tables in an instant.

We continually learn things in a visual way. So we see things and remember them and this is the key to learning tables the smart way!

To make multiplication tables far more memorable for your children you can use big visual numbers and put these in a place that will be remembered, so:

1. Make the numbers bigger
2. Put them in a place that is easily remembered
3. Learning both ways – eg When 4 x 3 and at the same time 3 x4 table
4. Use imagery as well

If you look at little words on a page nothing stands out.To make something stand out you can make it bigger and you can put them in a place where your children can see it so that they photograph the image in their minds and remember it.

The process of putting tables up in a place makes them stand out. It is a very, very simple technique and one which will photograph and implant the times tables and the answers into your children’s minds so that they have instant recall of the tables.To find out more please do read the other articles on this Blog and our free reports.

Most parents know how incredibly important it is for their children to learn the times tables.

The tables are so important that they are one of the building blocks to education. You have to learn your tables if you want to become good at maths.

You can teach the the times tables in such a way that your children will gain huge confidence, raise their self esteem and also gain the belief that they are clever. How?

We encourage you to use Memory Sheets for teaching your children the times tables. With Memory Sheets your children will keep getting the answers right very quickly and they will then believe that they are good at their tables. They will be able to recall the answers instantly.

When your children know their tables in this way you have helped create a belief in them that they are good at maths and they can carry this belief with them for the whole of their time at school. This belief that will motivate them to work hard at maths rather than believing that they are no good at it with the result that they do not try.

The method to use to learn the tables is Memory Sheets placed around your home. Doing this and following the method will result in instant recall of the tables.To find out more please see the other articles in this Blog.