The multiplication tables becomes part of the Mathematics Syllabus requirement at Primary 2 level. In this situation, parents are advised to start teaching them at the end of Primary 1 and try to commit to memory within the Year End school holidays. For Primary 2, they are required to memorize timetables 2,3,4,5 and 10. So it is advisable to teach them about some rules of these multiplication tables.
Some of these rules are:
1) Explain that anything multiply by zero is always zero.
2) Explain that anything multiply by 1 is always the same number.
3) For Multiplication Table 2, the numbers should always end with the following digits (0,2,4,6,8).
4) For Multiplication Table 3, when you add up the digits (until you get to only 1 digits), will be either 3, 6 or 9. (For example, 15 --> 6, or 27 -->9)
5) For Multiplication Table 4, numbers should always end with the following digits (0,2,4,6,8) . At this point, you can share with student that any number multiply by even number will always get even number.
6) For Multiplication Table 5, numbers should always end with 0 or 5.
7) For Multiplication Table 10, any numbers multiply by 10, just add 0 to the end of the number.
At this point, it would be better not to teach the students about the patterns that are seen in Multiplication Table, meaning for instance, do not tell students that for Multiplication Table 4, the digits always run in the sequence of (4,8,2,6,0) as it will serve to confuse them, taking them away from accomplishing the goal of committing these Multiplication Tables to memory.
