It is a way to add certain numbers together really quickly.

You already know a car has 4 tires.

What if you had two cars? How many tires in total? Well instead of adding all the tires together you can multiply 4 tires X 2 cars. If you know your multiplication tables you'll quickly know that 4 X 2 = 8.

While this was a simple example and you could have counted the tires almost as quickly, there are many examples in life where counting would take a lot longer.

You are having a birthday party and you've invited 8 friends.

You are buying cookies for the party and you think your hungry friends will eat about 5 cookies.

You want to know how many cookies to buy so you quickly multiply 8 friends times 5 cookies and determine you'll need 40 cookies for the party. Counting would have taken a lot longer, but thankfully you have the multiplication tables memorized.

Anything times 2 will produce an even number.

So when multiplying by 2 you can double check your work by thinking about whether your answer is an even number.

You can probaby count by 5s. If so, then knowing the 5 times table should be pretty easy.

If someone asks 6 times 5, you can just count by 5 six times: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. And that's your answer!

This is a neat one because the right answer always has an answer whose digits add up to 9!

For example, 9 X 3 = 36. In the answer 36 you have two numbers - 3 and 6. And 3 + 6 = 9. You can use this knowledge to double check your answer. If the two numbers in the answer don't add up to 9 then you don't have the right answer.