Danica McKellar - The Times Machine!: Learn Multiplication and Division. . . Like, Yesterday!

Copyright 2020 by Danica McKellar

Front cover design by Mike Verta

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Trade ISBN9781101934029

Library Binding ISBN9781101934036

Ebook ISBN9781101934043

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To my little boy, Draco, who isnt so little anymore! You continue to be my muse, in so many ways. You are the best parts of Mr. Mouse, and little Piddles is my Ms. Squirrel. I love you!

In this book, Im thrilled to present some super fun and easy ways to learn the multiplication factssomething I wish I had growing up! More on those in a moment

As kids, many of us learned our multiplication factstimes tablesby tiresome memorization and drills, and then applied those (painfully attained!) memorized facts to more complicated multiplication and division problems. Phew! It was often boring and more labor-intensive than we liked, but it worked, right?

Nowadays, the new math takes a much more visual approach, focused on teaching what it means to multiply and divide. Everything gets broken down into many more steps. While this can be useful in some ways, often it leads to overly complicated-looking third and fourth grade homework and parents wanting to pull their hair out! (See my New Math Translation Guidefor Grown-Ups! at the back, and save that gorgeous hair of yours.)

The other issue is that teachers often spend so much of their lessons covering these new teaching methods that they dont have enough time to help kids memorize their multiplication factsthe foundation upon which much of mathematics is built.

In this book, I take a two-pronged strategy. Yes, I cover the newfangled ways multiplication and division are taughteven for multi-digit multiplication and long divisionto make sure kids have success on tests, and to help parents figure out what the heck is going on with the foreign-looking homework! But what Im equally excited to share is Chapter 5: The Core of the Times Machine. This chapter is filled with truly entertaining ways for kids to learn their multiplication facts, once and for all. Youll find stories, poems, and fun pictures to help kids learn all of their factswhich will make a huge difference in their success. Being fluent with the times tables (multiplication facts) is key to being able to tackle fourth and fifth grade math with easeand the rest of middle school and high school math, for that matter!

Congratulations, and have fun experiencing this book with your child!

P.S. Most kids in third and fourth grade wont have any trouble reading this book, but I encourage you to enjoy some of it together! You might find yourself giggling at the antics of Mr. Mouse and Ms. Squirrel.

Throughout the book are Game Time sections with practice problems. Youll notice that I didnt leave room in the book for your child to do the math, so youll want to have a separate piece of paper handy. This was a deliberate choice to keep the book pages clean so your child can do the problem sets more than once for better mastery of the material. As an added bonus, siblings or friends will be able to use the book as well. Have fun!