Jurassic Kids & the times tables

Today we put the Jurassic Period on our 115-foot timeline of the world (all 4.6 billion years of it). The Jurassic Period was 208-144 million years ago and featured such dinosaurs as the stegosaurus, allosaurus, brachiosaurus, and diplodocus.

(Click on the photo to see it bigger.) You can imagine that they enjoy this part of their education much better than, say, the times tables or handwriting.

Speaking of the times tables, I am having some hard time getting Madison to memorize them. She knows that once she's through with this boring part of math, it's all mostly interesting stuff that you can do with numbers. While the memorization stuff is the most tedious, it still has to be done so that the rest can come with ease. I've tried everything I can think of to help her automatize them, for the last 4 months. We've written cheat sheet lists, we've written cheat sheet 10x10 charts, we play scatter math, we do it in the pool, in the car, at breakfast. We have written out the numbers and discovered all kinds of interesting patterns, some that David hadn't even realized. This morning I had her take ones she doesn't know and teach Ella the concept of multiplication by laying raisins out in rows to represent the equations. I've stretched my mind to make up stories about them to get her to remember them such as:

There were 10 trees ("threes") all in a row in the forest. The first six were normal. But the seventh tree was a "bendy one" (7 x 3 = 21). The eighth tree was a "bendy four" (8 x 3 = 24). The ninth tree was a "bendy seven" and the tenth tree was just "dirty" (10 x 3 = 30).

With this one, we draw out lines as we recite the little story.

But there are still many she just hasn't gotten and it IS mostly for lack of interest and focus. Can't blame the child, plus she isn't even 7 yet and the CAT achievement test we have to have her take each year doesn't even address multiplication until the 3rd grade (I'm told that in the 2nd grade test there is one question to see whether they recognize the X as a multiplication sign!). But of course I don't hold my kids to that standard, I hold them to their own standard, and it's hard struggling with her when I know that she can do it if she puts her mind to it. The one strategy that seems to have worked is that I started whispering one problem to her as the last thing she hears before she goes to sleep, and she really does know it when she wakes up. I know that Montessori basically teaches this by skip counting -- maybe I should try that. Any input from anyone? Laura?