Brower's using his addition board to help figure out a math problem.
I remember those hating those deadly boring math worksheets they made us work on in school so it is easy for me to sympathize with the boys on the issue of memorizing math facts.
On the other hand, when working with public school kids as a tutor, I can see that most kids fail in math because they have not memorized these facts. So along with presenting the lessons we work on, I really want the boys to practice. I refuse to hand them worksheets though and I hate flashcards as much as they do. So we’ve been putting our heads together to come up with alternatives. We’ve used board games in the past, but they are getting tired of the ones we have. Lately we’ve been having good luck using the online math games at Fun 4 the Brain. Sketch’s World game seem to particularly appeal to my boys and they are actually asking me to help them find the games on the Internet. I always make sure they have a hands on way to check a problem if they don’t know the answer. Brower is working on addition, so he keeps his addition board, nearby. Trapolin is working on multiplication so he uses his abacus. He has a multiplication board but the abacus is a bit quicker for this type of thing. Trapolin has noticed that the better he has his facts memorized, the less time he has to spend working on his Time 4 Learning lessons. He likes that and I like that I don’t have to fight with the boys to get them to practice. I am sure they will get tired of this too, so I have to look for some new board games. Does anyone out there have any other fun ways to drill math facts?
I fully agree that memorization of math facts is so important. In my combined first and second grade, I fully believed that understanding math does not replace memorization. Timed tests? Never, I thought, for these young and eager math students! Then I heard of a method and decided to try it. I ended up using this method for many years. Children loved taking timed tests. I believe the reason was, they kept track of their scores each day on a bar graph. This method could be for older children also. See my entry about The Joy of Timed Tests:
http://peggybroadbent.com/blog/index.php?s=The+Joy+of+Timed+Tests+in+First+and+Second+Grade