I suppose I can see how a mathematician would cringe at this method. My DD already understands the concept quite well and was pretty good at picking up on patterns to help her figure it out also. How many children learn multiplication tables by flash cards, songs or other rote memorization. I just knew that this was something that my DD would love because it is verbal, visual and silly and it would give her confidence and boost her automaticity with little effort. I don't really think that this or any of the other memorization methods comes at the cost of exploring patterns and developing additional math skills. Then again perhaps if she is trying to remember the answer to 9 x 7 for example, maybe she will fall back on trying to remember the story rather than working with the numbers. I don't know. I don't expect her to mind to go from question to story to answer much at this point. It just seemed to be one additional way to connect the numbers and she just seems to know them now without thinking about it. You have started me thinking though. My daughters school math is mind numbing repetition of the same nearly identical worksheets for the past 6 weeks. Clearly she is not exploring anything of use there. I was hoping that increasing fluency with math facts would help open up new options for her but perhaps I need to think of more than advancing her into more appropriate material. There is a lot of exploration she could do with a little encouragement.

Last edited by coveln; 10/06/14 03:08 PM. Reason: typo