Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Multiplication summer practice motivation

My DD8, is going into 4th grade Math. The school will use Saxon Math for the first time. Last year, she did not get her multiplication down very well. She did get an A in Math. I made a plan with her to practice multiplication this summer. She didn't do it. I offered a library Math class. She won't do it.(She has gotten a bit less agreeable this year with me.) We have about 4 weeks left and somehow she needs to do this.

She will not do the computer games. I ordered some Multiplication books, music and video from the library. I also found a Math dice game. So I'm getting ready if she wants another approach.

What I need is a motivational talk with her. Any ideas? My kids never go for prize incentives. I need her to want to do this with out feeling my pressure. She keeps saying she will do this but then does not do it. We have talked about making it a regular time but she doesn't want that.

Agree with MoN. Explain to her why she needs to know the facts, and that you'll help in any way you can. Avoid a power struggle. That's about all I can think of to do.

Why is she bucking at doing multiplication? My younger dd(9) is going into 4th grade and really dislikes Math. She gets the concept of multiplying but rote skills are tough because of slow processing speed and dyslexia. She has done well this summer using Times The Fun Way, which offers stories and a visual of the numbers. Having used that for the summer, she can now do math flashcards much quicker. Once she gets through whatever flashcard set she chooses, she is done for the day!

I wish school would of given her a speech about Multiplication facts over the summer. She was suppose to know them last year, with quick recall. That didn't happen.



This is exactly the issue I need to overcome.



I think this is very possible. When she doesn't know something like spelling words she wants to review on her own before I quizz her.

Could you tell me how to talk about memorization to her?

Thank you for the great advice. I feel like I'm not doing my job well, because she is not doing this. It is very hard to just let it be her problem but, I know I need to not make this a bigger fight.

Carrot and the Stick. If she doesn't like carrots (reward), give her stick. My DD is computer junkie. If we say that she has to do 3 pages of Math otherwise she won't be allowed to use computer, she will do it in a heart beat. It wasn't easy in the beginning, now she knows that we are firm, she will ask what she needs to do in the morning and get it out of the way and enjoy her day watching phineas and farbs or DSI, club penguin, etc...

Whenever we go on vacation, we tell her that we are doing this to celebrate one of her accomplishment (we are going vacation anyway and she felt that we dedicate this vacation for her). When she memorize multiplcation up to 6, do something (don't tell her ahead). I was on the recieving end when I was younger and it felt great and motivated me more than anything.

Today, I just said, Do you have Multiplication on your Leapster?
No. Then she said she will do some Math on the computer when we get home and she actually did it. I hope this lasts.

I think I need to find a way to reminder without telling her what to do. My kids are tricky.

I've been (also lackadaisically) encouraging DS to work on his multiplication table memorization this summer at the suggestion of the GT coordinator at school. He'll also be working on 4th grade math and she suggested that it is the point at which they really do need to have these basics down in order to work on the more advanced concepts. Our problem is that DS is fairly mathy and will just reason out the answer every time. He does this pretty quickly, so it hasn't effected his ability to do more complex problems very much. But, he could be faster, and it would cut out an extra step of figuring where he could make a mistake. Yesterday his dad was talking to him about it at lunch and he seemed more willing to do a math computer game today. He hates making mistakes on it though.

We're going on vacation in a little over a week, so I'm going to try to load up on multiplication activities for the car. I'm also going to set reminders for myself to encourage him to work on the computer in the meantime. We just get engrossed in other things and I forget to offer it as a suggestion of something to do.

Good luck and let us know if you find something that works.

We're very fond of our Flashmaster here:

www.flashmaster.com

You can use it with headphones if the "got one wrong" sound bothers the child (mine doesn't like her parents to hear it).

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