Eating Math for Breakfast - Intro

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This series of podcast lessons is meant to be the next step of learning how to turbo-charge your basic multiplication skills once you already know how to multiply one-digit numbers (like 6 x 7) using mental- and speed-math.

Registration information is at the bottom of this page. It’s free (for now, so sign up while it’s still free), but you’ll have to register.

The first step is to make sure you know those one-digit multiplications in your bones. I feel the best way to learn them is with “Numbers Juggling - Times Without the Tables.”

These lessons are perfect for anyone who wants to learn how to multiply large numbers, like 7,693, times one-digit numbers, like 8, in his or her head, without pencil, paper, or heaven forbid, a calculator.

Life doesn’t change unless you change, but it has to be a significant change in order to be meaningful.

Just deciding to be able to pass math or get “a better grade” is not a real incentive. It is a decision “not to suck.” How exited does it make someone to say that they “don’t suck” at something, compared to being really good and confident at something?

You don’t want to just be decent at something - you want to be able to eat it for breakfast.

So I came up with the Idea of making an easily usable, understandable podcast that anyone from third-grade-level on should be able to follow, that will help them get better at basic math, so they can “eat it for breakfast.” There will be one lesson for each weekday. Of course, you can do them whenever you want, but it’s best that you don’t skip any or do them out of order.

Here’s an Idea of how the lessons will progress:

Week 1:

• Lesson 1: Multiplying two-digit numbers (one of which is 5 or greater) by 2, from left to right, mentally.
• Lesson 2: Multiplying three-digit numbers (one of which is 5 or greater) by 2, from left to right, mentally.
• Lesson 3: Multiplying three-digit numbers (any of which may be 5 or greater) by 2, from left to right, mentally. Learning how to visualize numbers to remember them.
• Lesson 4: Multiplying four-digit numbers by 2. More than one of the digits will be greater than 5, making more than one carry.
• Lesson 5: Multiplying huge numbers with lots and lots of (easy) carrying.
Round-up and observations, insights, afterthoughts.
Week 2:

• Lesson 6: Introducing the concept of “safe” digits. Multiplying numbers made up of safe digits (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9) by 3, from left to right, mentally.
• Lesson 7: Multiplying numbers made up of safe digits and the digit 3, by 3, from left to right, mentally.
• Lesson 8: Multiplying numbers made up of any or all digits by 3, from left to right, mentally.
• Lesson 9: Practice multiplying numbers made up of any or all digits by 2, 3 or 4, from left to right, mentally. This time the numbers will be short, and we’ll be using the simple mnemonic technique we learned last week.
• Lesson 10: Round-up and observations, insights, afterthoughts. The “trick” for how to multiply a long string of 9s by any single-digit number, instantly.
Week 3:

• Multiplication by 4

And so on.
After that, we’ll tackle mental division.

There are only a few simple pre-requisites for these lessons:

• You must already know your one-digit multiplications (also know as “the times tables” or “multiplication facts”) cold. I don’t mean that you think you can remember them. I mean that you know them in your bones - with no hesitation. If you don’t, you will only become very frustrated when you try to do these “Math for Breakfast” lessons.

Don’t make things harder than they need to be - that is the job of schools. You, on the other hand, should really take things step-by-step and get each one down, solid, before you go on. You’ll make much more progress that way, and you’ll be much happier.

• You must also know what carrying is and what units, tens, hundreds, etc. columns mean.

You can see how one lesson builds on another. It may seem tedious, but usually the lessons will be between five and ten minutes, and I’ll try to get weirder and weirder, adding more and more strange, but interesting content, in order to keep it fun.

In ten weeks anyone using this stuff should be able to multiply any whole number by any digit (in other words, any number like 9,287 by 7) mentally, from left to right, instantly.

Math teachers all over the world should soon be getting freaked out by how some former “math–challenged” students are now better at the basics than they are.

The thing about “Eating Math for Breakfast” is that you can actually listen to the podcasts while you eat breakfast.

My optimal Idea is to have families listening to it together for breakfast. That way the children will learn superior methods off the bat, and parents will actually know what their kids are learning, and be able to help them with it at the times when the children may have problems with it.

Math is like anything else – you get better at it by sharing it and practicing it and discussing it with others. Making it a family event, where everyone benefits, can only be a good thing.

Adults, or other members of the family, who think they “already know how to multiply” will find that the way it is taught in “Eating Math for Breakfast” is different, (and probably much better) than the way they learned it. They’ll find that they are learning as much as the beginners in the family. They’ll be expanding their knowledge, expanding their minds in general, and building confidence that they never knew they could have before.

All this just by spending a few minutes in the morning, learning something simple, together!

My wife, a special-ed teacher for young children, informed me that nowdays a lot of kids eat breakfast at school, not at home. That’s cool - there are lots of other ways to do this stuff as a family. A parent can do it while doing housework or commuting to work in the car, bus, train, etc. Try not to skip days.

The child can do it while listening to it on his iPod or her CD player on the bus ride to school. Or a parent and child can listen it together as they drive to school. You get the idea. It’s fine as long as the members of the family are keeping up on the same level.

Then, once everyone has “digested” the lesson, they can discuss it in the evening, or at least check up that everyone understood it. Of course, it would be a pretty good thing to aim for if the family could spend some time on a “together” project that is easy, fun, and useful, each morning - at least on the weekend.

As you can imagine, this way of learning is also absolutely perfect for home-schooling and un-schooling families.

Most lessons will not involve any writing. It will be almost all mental math. I’ll try to give you some hints about how to remind yourself what we’ve learned and what to practice. I’ll also give you some cool tips about how to study, memorize and how to organize your thoughts and assignments.

When there is writing, I’ll let you know about a couple of amazingly simple and inexpensive tools, which are wildly effective.

I’ll try to keep it under fifteen minutes each morning. Usually it will be less than ten minutes. Your end of the deal is to practice for at least fifteen minutes each day. You can do it for a few minutes each time at various places and scattered times.

I want to mention that for now, the lessons are free. You simply have to register with your name and e-mail, and the URLs (web addresses) of the lessons will be sent to you in an e-mail.

Once I have completed uploading all the lessons to an operation (all the multiplication lessons for example) they will, from then on, only be available for a fee. If you have registered before a fee is charged, you can, of course, complete all the lessons for the operations you are on without having to pay anything.

These podcasts will always be available to anyone who has bought my booklet “Numbers Juggling - Times Without the Tables” before Feb. 1, 2007.

That’s enough for now. The first podcasts are already up, and you can sign up for them here. An e-mail with the details will be sent to you right away. Check your e-mail in a few minutes and the table of contents with the links to all the lessons will be made available to you.

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