Do you want to help your child learn multiplication? Maybe you have a struggling right brain learner who just doesn’t get it… Yet! Or are you looking for some distant learning ideas while self isolating due to the covid-19 pandemic? What ever the reason, I have got your covered.
At the moment our schools are open. It is looking like they will close soon and many people have made the decision to act now and social distant themselves to prevent the potential spread of the virus. We’re in that boat… So, planning to learn from distance means getting creative. Here is one way we will practice math at home.
Dry-Erase Memory Chart and Hands-on Activities
Learning Multiplication is a crucial math skills that appears easy for sequential left brain learners, but far from easy for our creative right brain learners. This chart is a hands on, creative, colourful and visually appealing math practice that can help visual spatial learners and children struggling to memorize their times tables…
The Struggle to Learn Multiplication.
I think one of the reasons I developed a passion for providing hands-on play based learning activities as a parent and went on to create Play-Based-Parenting is because I realised early on that my children were creative active learners. Visual right brain learners. See, they enjoy and thrive through experiential learning. They preferred tactile and visually appealing activities. They don’t do well with verbal instruction or auditory repetition.
Both Dimples and Miss T appear to have a dominant right brain strength. Therefore, traditional methods of learning just don’t click. This means learning is a bore if it is given orally, in black and white on paper or repetitive/sequential. Which unfortunately is often the main approach schools use.
Left brain learners are usually analytical and prefer traditional approaches. Thus, memorising sequences of times tables comes naturally. Left brain dominant children learn math facts easily by repeating them orally, practicing them on paper, or working with flash cards. This sequential way works for these auditory learners.
However, the right brain dominant child, requires a different approach both to memorizing facts, and performing calculation procedures. They thrive with experiential hands-on activities that have a sensory or a visual element.
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How to Help your Child Learn Multiplication at Home.
Last year, Dimples had a great teacher who noticed this. He said Dimples really struggles with multiplication when it is in the classroom using work sheets, or book work. However, when they are able to take their learning into the playground and use visual items or physical items, he totally gets it.
Considering multiplication is a core math skill that needs to be encoded and stored in memory for life, I wanted to help boost his skills. So, I made this chart, and it has been working a treat… I don’t get any complaints when I ask him to practice with this multiplication chart.
So, I designed this dry-erase multiplication chart to help Dimples with his multiplication at home. It tapers down from 1×1 to 12×12 so the visual learner can see patterns within the chart and across the chart. The formation of this chart is more visually appealing and simple than looking at a standard times table chart, where they are separated by number.
I added the element of colour in to the answer boxes to make it look visually appealing and also aide in the memory processing of the tables. For instance, a visual spatial learner will associate orange to multiples of six. This memory chart can help a right brain learner to “see” the answer as a whole. To memorise it visually, based on the patterns in the chart and the colours, rather than the step by step process of calculating the answer.
Additionally, there is a practical hands-on experience. I have added colourful clouds that can assist visual spatial learners activate their right brain by physically manipulating small objects, pictures or dots, in cloud groups.
How to use the chart.
- Get your multiplication Chart Here.
- Print it
- Laminate it.
- Provide a white board marker
- Explain the concept of groups
- (optional) Provide some counters, pebbles, crystal stones, leaves or small objects to use with the clouds.
- Use the Daily Learning Schedule & add Multiplication Practice as a task
Get Creative.
It would be beneficial to help child learn multiplication by incorporating some other hands-on activities before or after working on the chart. This would increase the retention of the multiplication tables. Think sea shells grouped into circles drawn in the sand… leaves lined up on the balcony steps (6 leaves on all 4 stairs = 6 x 4)… card games, where each player is handed 8 cards, how many cards are held by the players in total? use sultanas of berries to work out small sums during snack times.
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