In this post we are going to discuss multiplication. I'd like to start out by discussing how confusing multiplication can be for many of us. I will use my husband as an example (again!)... he uses math daily at his work- but hates trying to multiply in his head. He gets so confused... all the numbers get jumbled up inside his head. There are reasons for this... possibly, he never learned the basics of multiplication (times tables, etc.)- even more likely... he never really learned how we can group things out. The below video shows this conflict in a somewhat humorous- but rather realistic manner... the age of the video let's us know that this has been a problem throughout the years.
To look at multiplication... we must first learn to break apart what we are multiplying. We are going to observe this in one more video- one you may be familiar with! It's going "old school" but it is a great video to show how we break multiplication problems apart and group the numbers we are working with.
From this video you can see that multiplication isn't just about memorization... 5 x 5 = 25, it's about breaking apart the problem. Imagine 5 kids who each own 5 toys... if those kids had a party and brought their 5 toys each... how many would there be total? You can visualize each kid owning 5 toys, you can visualize them bringing their toys to the party... and then you can see the 5 separate groups of 5... then you could even count by 5's.... 5, 10, 15, 20, 25- our answer is 25.
By visualizing the problem we can work at solving it in a way we are going to fully understand- a way that will set the foundation for other similar (and even different) problems. We will learn the skills to break things apart and look at them in a way we will really be able to understand- and just as important, we will see that there is more than one way to solve a problem... and still get to the correct answer.
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