My kids so far really struggle with it (we have dyslexia issues that come into play…)
Besides their math program, which includes playing various math games, I’m using:
http://www.xtramath.org which is like intelligent flashcards. You sign up as the teacher, and can see their progress. I had to switch it to use the 6 second option because 3 seconds was too frustrating.
Timez Attack by Big Brainz – this is also like intelligent flashcards – except it is done in the form of a video game. The student is a character walking around in a dungeon trying to defeat the monsters by answering the questions quickly.
Both are free – Timez Attack you can buy more levels – ie – more scenery – the free version does practice all the math facts.
We’ve used Rapid Recall with great success for fact memorization with both of our children. Now, we do daily drills using MathUSee’s online drills application. Rapid Recall is an investment, but worth it. MUS’s drill app is free.
We play math war daily. It’s pretty similar to regular war, except you remove the 10s and face cards. For basic facts you draw two cards each instead of one. For addition and multiplication the highest answer wins, for subtraction and division lowest card wins.
We also play it to practice two (or more) digit addition and subtraction, as well as column addition. We have also recently begun using it for practice with multiplying larger numbers and I know there’s a way to do it with fractions, but I haven’t learned that version yet.
This has been a very helpful tool for my ds, who could potentially take hours to finish a worksheet, because it keeps him focused and on his toes. 🙂
Times tales is an option for multiplication. I’ve also found that if my kids are really good at addition, then subtraction isn’t so hard after all. Same thing goes for multiplication and division. Right start math games are excellent for reinforcing the facts, but they do require your time. My kids adored swim to ten, go to the dump, and war. We played rows and columns the other day and it was pretty fun too.
War is pretty simple. It’s for two players and you divide the deck equally between them. Then each player draws a card and the player with the highest card wins and gets to keep both cards. If both players draw the same number then it’s “war”. At that point each player draws three more cards which they lay face-down on the first card and then each player draws a final card which gets placed face-up. The highest card wins and that player gets to keep all those cards that were drawn in that round. At the end of the game the player with the most cards is the winner.
So for math war it’s the same idea, but each player draws two (or more) cards each round and adds, subtracts, multiplies or divides their numbers – whatever operation you’ve decided on beforehand.
Here’s a link for playing math war. Sometimes it’s much easier to see them to read about. 🙂