Remember Anything

After the experience I had teaching our phone number to my son, my wife commented that she had seen several products that claimed to use mnemonics to teach the multiplication tables to kids. Did I think we should get one?

At first I thought, “I could probably develop something myself.”  But, I had her send me some links.

One of the links was to a company named Trigger Memory Systems.  They make a product called “Times Tales.“  A set of stories that associate the combination of numbers 6 through 9 to their answers.

Why only 6 through 9?  Well, think about it.  We don’t want to teach multiplication facts without the child understanding what they are doing.

Most kids can do the sets 0 through 5 pretty quickly doing addition if they have to.  In fact, when I teach my kids multiplication, that’s exactly how I teach it.  However, using addition gets to be problematic once you get past six.  Since they already understand that we are just adding we can use mnemonics to help them learn the facts faster.  Mnemonics isn’t a substitution for understanding.  It’s a way of remembering better what you already understand.

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