I feel a bit bad for not memorizing it, to be honest. Not sure if there is any other way for learning to multiply?
How do you "understand" that 6x 8 = 48?
With bigger numbers, then you can apply a system. And as I mentioned I also "cheated" a bit with the basic table. For example I would have remembered that 5 x 8 = 40 and then calculated 6 x 8 = 5 x 8 + 6 in my head, because the multiplications for 5 are easy (half the other factor x 10 +/- 5). But there might not be a cheat for every point in the table?
You can learn to better comprehend a quantity or amount. So you understand that 6 * 8 is larger than 2 * 8, and then understand that it is actually 3 times that. Another approach would be to always think of multiplication as condensed summation, so 6 * 8 = 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 = (8+8) + (8+8) + (8+8) = 32 + 16 = 48. I would let my kid write out the summation and apply an analytical approach rather than memorising it blindly. I guess you have to memorise it eventually, but a lot of kids are lost if they fail to recollect the answer.
How do you "understand" that 6x 8 = 48?
With bigger numbers, then you can apply a system. And as I mentioned I also "cheated" a bit with the basic table. For example I would have remembered that 5 x 8 = 40 and then calculated 6 x 8 = 5 x 8 + 6 in my head, because the multiplications for 5 are easy (half the other factor x 10 +/- 5). But there might not be a cheat for every point in the table?