The idea behind multiplication is to shortcut adding the same things over and over again. You use multiplication when you have groups of the same size. For example, maybe you have three cups of water that you drank ten times. How many cups of water did you drink total? You could solve this problem by counting adding the amount of times you drank the water from each cup together, or you could clump them into groups to multiply.   The idea behind division is splitting equal parts into groups. If you have a pizza with eight slices and four friends, how should you split it up so that each person gets an equal amount of the pizza? In division, that problem would be written as eight divided by four. Each person gets two pieces of pizza. For example, order doesn’t matter when you multiply. That’s one of the properties that you should learn if you want to learn multiplication.  You also should learn multiplication problems that change the order of factors, which is called commutativity, problems that change the grouping of factors, which is called associativity. Becoming familiars of the rules to each number will be a huge help when dividing and multiplying. For example, when you multiple numbers by five the answer will always end in a five or a zero. If you multiply a number by two, it will always end in an even number. Similar rules apply for division. Learn these rules and practice your tables.

Summary:
Understand the concept of multiplication and division. Learn the properties of multiplication. Practice your multiplication and division tables.