My DD, age 8, tests with poor short-term memory, so math facts drill is both hard and very necessary. She responds best when I talk to her about two things: the kinds of test scores I obtained when I was her age (I was individualized and VERY motivated to wrack up a lot of good scores), and the kinds of jobs available to Americans who just spend their time watching TV vs Americans who are motivated to figure things out. This summer we've mainly done Mad Minute Math - 1 minute fluency drills - 4 minutes each of addition, subtraction and multiplication, and worked on spatial/geometry stuff.
DS#2 had a 3rd gr. teacher who had been the music teacher - she set the times tables to songs and it was SO easy to remember them-add "and" where needed for the rhythm:
3s set to Jingle Bells
4s to Happy Birthday
6s to She'll be Comin 'Round the Mountain - add YeeHaw the first 2 lines
7s to For He's a Jolly Good Fellow
8s to "A,B,Cs" - "Come and sing a song of 8s" then start
9s to We Wish You a Merry Christmas
