Would you move on to multipication?

[HeatherM]

My 8.5 year old son isn't fast enough on his addition/subtraction speed drills so I have not moved on to multipication. I keep drilling him with flash cards and giving him Rod and Staff worksheets, and I plan to order calculadder as soon as I have some extra money. Do you think I am right to wait?

My other thought was to have him begin memorizing multipication, but continue his addition/subtraction cards.

Somedays he is quite fast and other days extremely slow and distracted.

[Amber in AUS]

I don't have any kids that age yet, but personally i would move on. I would introduce the concept of multiplying and keep drilling the add/sub facts whilst you do so. Sometimes it can get stale and he might be up for something fresh being a new year and all. Obviously he understands the concepts add/sub so as long as he can work it out accurately i would move on.

 

On a personal note i NEVER learned math facts and still completed top level math with A's to graduate high school and be accepted into the course i wanted at University.

 

Move on, but keep at it!

[ElizabethB]

We recently bought a Flashmaster. While at $50 it was pretty expensive, it does addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

 

It's been very helpful for my daughter's addition facts, and I'm sure we're going to need to for multiplication, too.

 

It's made learning the facts much faster, and allows much quicker ID of the ones she needs to work on. She also likes it a lot better than worksheets. (Flash cards didn't work so well for us. Worksheets worked OK, but took a long time.)