My kids struggled remembering their basic tables and number facts and it gets boring writing them out or reciting them … so I made a quick tool to help them and turned it into a bit of a game.
Each morning as a part of the routine (before any fun), the kids had to complete their table of the day. We started with the easiest ones and once they mastered them, they could move on.
I gave each of them a stack of my blank templates printed at home on our computer … they would write the table in that they were doing all the way down the sheet, take a breath, start the stopwatch and then complete the answers. Once they could do that in less than 60 seconds, they would move to the second sheet where the table questions were not in order anymore.
You can set the times and rewards to suit your children but we had a system that they stayed on the same table each morning until they could complete the mixed sheet in less than 1 minute … then we moved on to the next table.
To mix it up I would sometimes ask them to go back to an easy or older one and the kids recorded their times on a sheet to monitor their improvement. We also had simple rewards for doing it each day regardless of the times and something for when they moved onto a new table …
Keep it fun, offer support and don;t put them under pressure … let them make it a game.
Download the myTables Template here
School Mum Katrina
