Hold on a moment. Children need to move in order to learn the times tables? I can hear you say football, basket ball, netball, cycling, drama, school plays, yes I understand movement is involved with learning all these, but surely not times tables.

Well yes, and now you'll see why movement is great for learning times tables. The first thing to highlight is that children love moving about. This is what they want to do.

When you think about children learning the times tables do you think of children moving about? Most likely not, I'll bet that when you learned them you were sitting down, wouldn't you rather have been able to move.

Being still is therefore not the best way to learn times tables, especially because there is a better method of learning.

Motion creates emotion and if you move about it can change how you feel.

For children moving makes them happy. When children are happy they are much more likely to want to be involved and to do things.

In our case your children will be more eager to learn the times tables if you can bring movement into the mix rather then having them sit down all the time.

How can you use movement in learning the times tables.

Here is how to do it.

The first thing to do is abandon the rote learning that so many children are forced to use when learning times tables.

Here is an example with the three times table: 1x3 is 3, 2x3 is 6, 3x3 is 9, right up to 12x3 is 36.

What a boring way to learn. To learn the tables children need a method that makes them fun to learn and easy to remember. The method that does this is based on what the Memory Champions do to remember vast amounts of information.

The Champs make images of the things they want to remember and link these images with locations.

Times tables are easy for children to learn when they do this using real images and real locations.

The times tables are drawn as particular images. These drawings are put around your home in particular locations. You now have the link between the tables and locations.

Those times tables that your children find more challenging are put in more memorable and unexpected locations in the home.

Often in places that will cause children to laugh. This makes the tables more fun to learn and they are therefore more memorable.

What about movement? Where does this come in? To learn the times tables really well your children now run around your home seeing the tables in their locations. They will link the particular tables to these locations, learn them and have a lot of fun doing it.

Movement generates emotions. When you encourage your children to combine moving, fun and learning, using the memory technique to learn times tables the effect is immediate. Your children will know the times tables very well.

The fantastic thing is that other maths subjects can also be learned in this fun way.