I have just heard about an age old method of using your fingers to learn multiplication. Many people use it for kids who are "visual learners". It is also used as a way to help kids learn in a fun and dynamic way. Sounds like a bad idea for kids who could just learn the tables. Any thoughts? My dd needs to learn her tables by the fall.

Finger math is fun, but it can not replace automaticity with basic math facts.

ALEKS' QuickTables provides an excellent way to learn all the tables, and by automatically focusing on the problem areas, it is faster than most other tools I've come across.

This is one of the better articles... just happens to be @ one of our favorite sites:
Why Memorize Math Facts @ Hoagies

(and I love the author's little tag at the end about learning Greek & Latin roots!)

Great! Thanks for the resouce recommendation!

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/pages/multiplication.htm

I think it's harder to learn multiplication on your fingers (I'm guessing the link is what you're talking about), because there's a lot of mental math involved.

I know the 9 tables are extremely easy to learn with your fingers, but it's a bit of a cheat. I'm not sure about the rest.:/

yes that is the idea. it looked pretty complicated to me too.

I would say yes she is a visual learner. The book looks very cool. I will look it up at the library. Thanks!

my older daughter learned multiplication by memory, but my younger one DD4 is more visual I haven't gotten to multiplication with her yet but I do use an abacus with her for adding and subtracting, once she can visualize something then she can do it without the abacus, something to try?

My DD learned fingers and skip counting for multiplication & division. I like that she learned this way because I feel she better understands the concept of what the numbers are doing.
There are many kids out there who have their times tables memorized and have no clue what it represents and how those numbers work in the world.
But of course what works for us may not work for you.

great post! My little guy is a very visual learner and wants SO badly to learn the multiplication tables but just can not memorize things (one of the really cool parts that we liked about his old montessori school was with their math, the kids learned the why behind the math and didn't just memorize)....but I am have a doozy of a time trying to come up with a way to help him learn them...thanks for the great post and links!

We found a "mutiplication war" card game and Timez Attack. Both are working well for my dd. The card game in particular is good because my dd freaks out at the slightest bit of frustration. I just handed her the answer card to look at if she needed to and it worked great. Each player lays down a card with an equation on it. They say the answer to the equation and the player with the higher value takes both cards. The player with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

Thanks Dottie for the cool book idea - Times the Fun Way book - we ordered this after I saw your post and it came in the mail today....most of the lessons are really cool and I can see how they can help a child visualize that particular math fact. My son was SUPER excited to see the book because he has been dying to learn his tables and has a horrible time with memorization. I feel really silly but had never been shown the way you can do 9's times tables on your fingers - the book was easy to understand and is well written - he already learned the 4x4 lesson (you have to be 16 to drive a 4x4) and thinks it's cool that he can finally keep that in his memory :-) Thanks!

Hmm...I now know of two ways to do multiplication using fingers, and I'm not sure which one you are talking about. There is a cool book called Fingermath that I picked up at the library book sale and got addicted to for a while, and I like its methods. Then there is the stupid thing that my DS6 learned at school (I think...he may have made it up himself) that is really keeping him from just memorizing his multiplication tables. He counts up from the last one that he knows, basically. And when I try to free him from that, because I know he could simply memorize the tables in a day if he made up his mind, and he knows half of them already, he freaks out about it. Arrgh!