Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Memorizing Multiplication Facts

My youngest (Jared, 9) has been having a little bit of trouble memorizing all of his math facts.  We've tried regular flash cards and drills.  Then I tried cards with the answers to give him the answer to memorize.  Nothing has completely worked.  He has a lot of them memorized- but not all and has been getting more and more frustrated with himself :( We got to the point where I didn't want to go forward in his math studies until we have them down.

So, I stumbled upon an idea by Diane Craft here.  They are called "Right Brain Multiplication Cards". 
They take the left brain data and imbed it into the right brain picture. She says, "the velcro that puts things into the right brain is color, picture, humor and emotion."  I decided to make some of my own.






















Each fact will have a story to go with it.  So for 7 X 12 I made up- A rocket (7) went around the earth 12 times and used up 84 gallons of fuel (probably makes no sense- but oh well!).  Or, 7 X 9- A rocket (7) hit a meteor (9) and blew into 63 pieces.  You keep the problem covered up and reveal each part as you say it. 

So far he has them all memorized and I made them yesterday.  He looked at them two times!

...I'm off to make the 8's!

7 comments:

  1. Those are cool!!! Ok, can you resend that link please? :D I have some sets of crime-fighting/spies/FBI cards to make now. lol! Where did you get the pictures? Just clip art or what?

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  2. Love it! Ditto to all of tiffs questions.

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  3. Thanks girls! The link is above in the second paragraph. That lady has a ton of resources. I did use clip art. If you all are interested I can just send you the documents to print for yourselves :)

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  4. www.googleimages.com is a great resource for clip art. Hundreds of thousands of images. Do you use the same picture throughout (i.e. the 7 would always be a rocket, etc.?) Have you drilled using just numbers, not pictures? Just wondering how she recommends determining mastery. I need to go to her site. Too many resources and links and too few brain cells to remember...oh yeah, and too little time. Neato idea!

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  5. I love this idea! My 4th grade daughter is having the hardest time memorizing her multiplication facts. Would you please email me your documents to print myself?

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  6. I LOVE that idea! My son too has had a hard time. I would love for you to email the documents as well! lovemymatthew2000@yahoo.com

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  7. I know that this post is from 2011. I would love a copy of the cards that you made. My daughter has dyslexia and is really struggling with her multiplication facts. Do you still have the documents? Would you please email them to me if so? My email is kestreldnz@sbcglobal.net Thank you.

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