Wednesday, 25 May 2011, Day 183/365.
JJ’s teacher told us a good way of teaching a kid their times tables.
It involves creating them on the computer, or you could do it by hand, and cutting them out so they’re all individual like in the image above.
Then you put them all in a jar and pull them out one by one and ask the question, eg 10 times 1. If your child doesn’t answer straight away it goes back in the same jar.
If they do answer straight away it goes in another jar.
I guess the idea is repetition so that it eventually sinks in.
For me, it’s remembering to do it with all the other stuff I have to do as a single parent.
Now, for a way to get a kid to learn how to spell!
Firstly, congratulations on the month’s work – may it lead to providence!
That is a great trick – something we probably still need to do.
I actually did a similar thing with dd’s reading words in younger grades (and probably need to get back to as well) and used them as flash cards.
Jeanie is right – use the same technique for spelling. Another tip is to do it whilst doing the ironing (that’s if your clothes aren’t all non-iron) or any other relatively mindless job around the house. It worked with three of my four (and might have done with the fourth but he needed one-to-one to cope with dyslexia).