Guess what! I got a little ambitious and decided to introduce the concept of Multiplication to my 5 year old son, Ryan. Just to see if he could grasp it. Not initially when I tried to explain groupings but I thought of a way which is easier for him to comprehend.
With the example below, I just told him to take either one number, in this case 3, as the number of baskets/boxes. Then the remaining number is the number of balls to put in each basket/box. After that, he is to add up all the balls and that is the answer to 3 x 2. See below.
And since he can also choose 2 to be the number of boxes and 3 to be the number of balls in each box, then it will be that 3 x 2 = 2 x 3 = 6.
He got it! When I tested him another day, all he did was to draw the boxes and balls for 3 x 2. Then for the 2 x 3 in the next line, he just wrote the answer 6.
Try it out and let me know if it works for you. At this stage, the kindies children and E.nopi kids are familiar with counting balls. So, I just use back what is familiar to them and introduce the concept. I'm definitely NOT asking him to memorize timetables now ;p
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