TOS Review: Multiplication Teaching and Learning Made Easy

I have shared with you guys our struggles to memorize our math facts.  I've been pretty eager to jump on any reviews that are math related.  Our most recent math review is Multiplication Teaching and Learning Made Easy by Math Made Easy.

Priced at $24.95 for the spiral comb bound workbook, this program is geared toward 3-4 graders.  The workbook is your basic, black and white worksheet drills.  A big difference is what creator Glenda Brown James calls a new way to teach math facts- eliminate redundancy- which leads to mastery of multiplication facts in 6 weeks.  She teaches that children should cover 0's, 1's 10's, and 11's facts first because they are naturally the easiest to memorize.  Next you should teach your student that 3x2 is the same as 2x3- thereby eliminating half of the multiplication table that needs memorizing.  She follows this up with teaching 6 random facts per week for 6 weeks.  Each week has a set of workbook pages, labeled at the top with which day it is to be completed.  There are also pre and post tests, reviews, games, and flashcards.

If I were to be quite honest with you, I'd have to confess that I am not too impressed with this program for our family.  My children do not respond enthusiastically to black and white worksheets- perhaps because they usually use another computer-based program that is visually and audibly stimulating.(We can all thank technology for these sorts of hang-ups, can't we?!)  Also, from the moment I received this in the mail, I kept looking for instructions and they simply aren't there.  One of the games had no instructions whatsoever and I found myself growing very frustrating when trying to figure out how to put it together!   

The thing is- I'm just not sure I'd pay the $24.95 for it. Perhaps you might like to hear other crewmates' opinions......


Disclaimer:  I was given a copy of this curriculum, as a member of the Old Schoolhouse Review Crew, in exchange for an honest and objective review