Ah multiplication facts. You either learn them easily or you don’t. I think that was a defining moment for me in elementary school; that was when I realized I hated math. My parents worked with me for hours — even bribed me — to get me to memorize them. When I kept blanking on my times tables in class, I got penalized and held back from recess. Nothing really worked. From there on I always felt behind in math — and truth be told it would be many failed math tests and years later before I had a name for my struggles: dyscalculia.
As a Montessorian, I don’t put a whole lot of stock in rewards or punishment as motivators for learning. What I do find helpful is interest-led, multi-sensory, hands-on repetition. That’s how you engage the brain to truly change.
“The hand is the instrument of intelligence. The child needs to manipulate objects and to gain experience by touching and handling. ”
–Dr Maria Montessori
I’ve been reflecting on all of this as my middle daughter approaches the same age that I was when I fell out of love with math. I want to make the passage to abstract math as seamless as possible. So we turn to the hand, to movement and to repetition.
Enter Math Wrap Ups (we received a set of these from Timberdoodle in exchange for a review, but we’d be using them regardless). You’ve probably seen these clever and simple math keys before. If not, let me tell you why we are big fans.
Wrap ups are durable, hands-on and self-correcting math fact practice tools. To use them, you wrap the attached string from number to number connecting the math problems to their answers. For example, if you’re working on multiplication x3, all of the numbers on the left hand side are the multiplicands and the three the multiplier. Simply wrap the string around to answer.
Then you can flip the key over to check the answer on the back. If the lines don’t match the string wraps, you need to go back and check what you did.
Wrap Ups are portable, take up little space, and are quick to complete. I like that the numbers are randomized; we’ve been doing a lot of skip counting lately, so these help make sure the facts are there regardless of order.
After working with our multiplication Wrap Ups a while, we set to work on completing our Montessori Tables A. Montessori Table A is a big lower elementary work that kicks off more complex multiples work, introduction to prime numbers and factors etc.
It’s also basically a demonstration of learned math facts. Wouldn’t you know — my kids found it to be a piece of cake. I’m so grateful we’re able to make learning our multiplication facts low-stress, hands-on and fun.
If you’d like to pick up the multiplication Wrap Ups from Timberdoodle, click here. Also the Wrap Ups for Division (which we use a lot too) are here.
Our violin teacher has old wrap-ups like these for music! This is really cool to know about, for math, I mean. I still have my Little Professor “calculator” from Texas Instruments I used as a kid for learning addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts, now my kids try it now and again.
Thanks for sharing your school with the world!