Times Fables: Learn your times tables in as little as a week

This book is brilliant! It is a amazon self-published book which is why its a bit expensive and has a thin 'self-published' feel to it but don't let that put you off! I'm very grateful to the author for providing a different way of learning times tables from the same old learning by rote! It never worked for me and unsurprisingly my daughter, who loves to draw, seems to be the same. I've never been able to remember 6 x 9 for example but now for some reason I find it easy to remember 6 elves go to the magic tree (9) 54 days before Christmas. It's like using mnemonics for times tables. Some people will say its far to complicated as you have to learn a story in order to remember something else but for many people the remembering the story part is far easier than just remembering the numbers on their own! Me included! When I first read it, I could feel myself getting a bit overwhelmed with all the characters and numbers but if you take it one story at a time and just stick with it your brain soon cracks the code. You start to see the characters as their numbers and you remember the resulting number in the story. My daughter has enjoyed the stories and has already remembered some of them. As we keep reading, I'm sure the harder ones will stick too. She also loves the rhymes in Part Two for the 3X3, 4x4, 5x5 etc. These are great and she's already cracked these. I'm now planning to get the author's other book on number bonds!

My eight year old daughter has struggled with all times tables since she was introduced to them, she could recall very few of the “easy” ones (2,5,10) never mind any of the trickier ones. We were recommended this book and she was engrossed from the start, she got the stories straight away & learnt her times tables (and subsequently division, once I’d explained she could do this if she recalled the stories!) in about five days!!! I’m astounded at how good this book is, it is brilliant if this approach to learning suits your child (and it definitely does for mine). Even my younger son is able to recall the stories and knows the answers. I’d give it more stars if I could!

This is pretty magical this book! Read with my 6 year old and she knew her times tables within the day! It’s great to use imagination to form stories to help remember the other ones too. My only concern is I learnt mine from rote learning as a child and it remains embedded today- not sure how long this will remain for her. Also, there’s no sequencing, the book jumps from one times table set to the next, again, not sure how this would help long term. Nonetheless it certainly helped with engagement and confidence so it’s worth the buy d even just to make maths more fun!!

Learning you times tables is not a cognitive task, it is simply a memory recall process. When you "know" your times tables you don't calculate the multiplications in your head, that would be too slow. You simply "know" them by retrieving them from memory. This book uses the popular and effective "Link and Story Method" memory technique to create an odd but memorable story about each multiplication and answer. Its amazing, I read it to my 7 year old son without explaining what it was all about. It took about 2 evenings to complete (part 1) and I took my time making sure to test him on remembering previous stories as I read him the next few. On the third evening I explained what the strange stories were about and how they related to numbers and times tables. He got it immediately and then simply knew all his times tables 3,4,6,7,8,9’s. Slow recall to begin with as he needed to remind himself of the story in his head but over the next few days and weeks it became second nature. The "Link and Story Method" memory technique is nothing new but in this scenario it seems like magic... fully buy into the technique and you can believe the 5 star reviews, this is an amazing book. I can only assume the reviewers describing the book as rubbish just didn't grasp what it was trying to achieve. Make it about stories first... then numbers after.

My 7 year old is massively struggling with her times tables. This is a good idea for her as she can remember the stories. I’m a teacher so know the pitfalls involved in this - there’s little if any thought about linking the times tables so she won’t understand the link between 6X4 and 12x2 and 3x8. I’ve tried all the other methods to help her and this is a last resort to try and give her some confidence. The issue is that she got bored half way through and wasn’t bothered about some of the ‘fables’. She can remember some, definitely not all and not if we don’t read them often. It’s not the magic solution for us, but I can see how it could work with some children. I also think there’s a danger of teaching this too young - before you’ve tried other methods. As mentioned, because I’m a teacher, I do feel strongly that mathematics is something children need to put together in mathematical ways, otherwise they’re just memorising without the key concepts needed for maths success. Having said that, this is the only way for some children, my daughter probably included. She’s weak on so many of her times tables (2s, 5s too!) and I’m not sure she’s going to learn them anytime soon. So overall this is probably a bit of a gimmick but if it can give some children some confidence in math, that will lead to more learning. Every teacher knows that a confident child is much more willing to learn and that’s the biggest hurdle in teaching! Get them hooked and enjoying knowing the times tables and it will lead to other learning. Just don’t expect it to be the magic solution in a week!

This is a brilliant way to learn the hard times tables. I struggle with mine and I read this and could answer way more than I did before. The problem my child has, is working memory. So he can’t recall them even with the help of this book. My child is 9 and is waiting for an ADHD and dyslexia diagnosis.

Honestly, the idea of writing a story to help recall times tables is great, but these stories have no memory hooks in at all & the illustrations that sre supposed to “look like” numbers, they just didn’t. Feels like a rough draft that needed an editor.

Está en inglés y ayuda mucho a que los niños aprendan las tablas de multiplicar con reglas nemotecnicas a través de historias cortas.

I cannot believe it really works. My 6 years old daughter remembers the stories (so the times tables) after reading them only one time! Amazing book.