Taking it to the street.

Emma has been struggling to memorize her multiplication facts.  She can work them out in her head, but has not been able to recall them from memory.
So we took our math to the street yesterday.  It was a beautiful morning, and the kids had a blast playing multiplication hopscotch, and other variety of games and memory work.

Jack was able to work on skip counting and jumping, while the girls worked on the 3's.

I think that this worked.  Before bed I reviewed the facts with Emma, and she knew them all without hesitation.  

We have tried all kinds of rote memory work for Emma and it just hasn't stuck.  My theory is that when she is asked to do something physically challenging (jumping from square to square- don't land on the lines, etc) it frees up the portion of her brain that was anxious about the math.  She was so worried about trying to remember that it blocked it.  Being physically active distracted her and allowed it to really sink in. 

I'm going to look and see if I can find any literature to confirm this. :)

one article, and another

Moving on to the 4's today!