“If you have an 8-10 year old, you need to get this book. It’s so fun, too!”
– Candace Cameron Bure, actress and bestselling author of Grow, Candace, Grow
“Danica McKellar is a great teacher! Kids will feel like she’s right by their side.”
– The New York Times
“Brilliant… Multiplies the good times for young mathematicians”
– Kirkus Book Review
“Actor-author McKellar, who has a mathematics degree, uses catchy visuals to teach kids and parents multiplication and division [with] colorful illustrations and appealing cartoon graphics, stories, and rhymes.”
– Booklist
About The Times Machine!
A revolutionary and FUN way to memorize multiplication facts is finally here! New York Times bestselling author Danica McKellar has helped more than a million kids finally “get” math and have a great time doing it. Next up? Multiplication and division!
Join Mr. Mouse and Ms. Squirrel and experience an entirely new way of memorizing multiplication facts. Using colorful stories, silly rhymes, and more, actress, author, and math whiz Danica McKellar helps to break down the rules of multiplication and to translate many of the (often confusing!) multiplication and division methods taught in today’s classrooms. This lively “times” travel adventure is an entertaining *lifesaver* for frustrated kids and parents everywhere.
Learn multiplication and division, like, yesterday!
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Peek Inside!
The first few chapters of the book introduce multiplication and division with fun cartoons and exercises. Then comes the Core of the Times Machine – an entire section dedicated to helping kids memorize their multiplication facts, once and for all! There are fun tricks, and colorful stories and poems, making the most challenging facts a cinch to learn!
And finally, the last few chapters explore 2-digit multiplication and long division, along with explanations of all the new Common Core methods you might find in homework – all with cartoons and fun, of course!
“New Math” vs. Memorizing Multiplication Facts!
A Note to Parents
In this book, I’m thrilled to present some super fun and easy ways to learn the multiplication facts—something I wish I had growing up! More on those in a moment . . .
As kids, many of us learned our multiplication facts—times tables—by 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 laborintensive 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 Guide— for 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 don’t have enough time to help kids memorize their multiplication facts—the 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 taught—even for multi-digit multiplication and long division—to 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 I’m 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. You’ll find stories, poems, and fun pictures to help kids learn all of their facts—which 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 ease—and 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 won’t 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. . . .
About Danica
Best known for her roles on The Wonder Years, The West Wing, and lately for her popular movies on Hallmark Channel, Danica McKellar is also a New York Times bestselling author of math books for kids, with over a million copies sold since 2007. Starting with “Math Doesn’t Suck,” “Kiss My Math,” “Hot X,” and “Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape,” books aimed at middle school and high school readers, she wrote her first children’s picture book, “Goodnight Numbers” in 2017, followed by “Ten Magic Butterflies,” the “Bathtime Mathtime” series, and “Do Not Open This Math Book,” aimed at 6-8 year olds, introducing us to the sweet character of Mr. Mouse while helping kids parents and teachers everywhere with Common Core addition and subtraction! She is also an internationally-recognized mathematician and advocate for math education. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA with a degree in Mathematics, Danica has been honored in Britain’s esteemed Journal of Physicsand the New York Times for her work in mathematics, most notably for her role as co-author of a ground-breaking mathematical physics theorem which bears her name (The Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem). She is incredibly proud that “Goodnight Numbers” was selected for inclusion in Dolly Parton’s literacy charity, The Imagination Library, and her voice can be heard narrating its documentary debuting in Spring 2020.
The Times Machine! is Danica’s tenth McKellar Math book.
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