Times Tables Practice: Games, Flashcards and Tricks That Work
Times tables are one of the few things in elementary math that simply have to become automatic. A child who knows 7 x 8 instantly has spare brainpower for the harder parts of a problem, while a child who has to work it out every time runs out of steam halfway through. The good news is that automatic does not have to mean boring. Here is a practice plan built on short daily reps, plus the tools and tricks that make each table faster to learn.
Little and often beats long and rare
The single biggest mistake with times tables is cramming. Twenty facts practiced once a week fade; five minutes practiced daily sticks. The brain treats anything it retrieves repeatedly, with gaps between sessions, as important, and files it for instant recall. So the plan is simple: one table at a time, a few minutes a day, and do not move on until the current table is instant.
A good order to learn them: start with 2, 5 and 10, which have the friendliest patterns, then 3 and 4, then 6, 8 and 9, and finish with 7, 11 and 12. The 7s are the trickiest for most kids, which is exactly why they are worth extra reps.
Flashcards: the fastest tool for the job
Flip flashcards force the brain to retrieve the answer rather than just recognize it, which is precisely what builds instant recall. Our free flashcard sets cover every table individually, from the 2 times table up through the 7 times table and beyond to 20, plus a big numbers set for 25, 50, 75 and 100. Each set lets a child mark a fact as known or still learning, and the deck automatically keeps serving the facts that need work. Progress saves on your device, so tomorrow picks up where today left off.
Two rules make flashcards work: say the whole fact out loud, “seven eights are fifty-six”, not just the answer, and always finish a session on a fact they got right.
Make it a game when drills get stale
When plain reps lose their shine, switch the same facts into game form. The Times Tables game gives ten quick questions on any table with instant feedback, and the Times Tables Matching Game hides facts and answers under cards, so memory and multiplication get trained together. A quick round of Quick Math makes a good warm-up before either.
The game versions matter more than they look: a child who refuses a third run of flashcards will happily play three rounds of a matching game, and the facts do not care which format delivered the reps.
Tricks for the tables kids find hardest
A few patterns turn scary tables into easy ones.
The 9s have the famous finger trick: hold up all ten fingers, fold down the finger you are multiplying by, and read the answer from the fingers on each side. For 9 x 4, fold the fourth finger: three fingers left of it, six right of it, 36. The digits of every 9s answer also add up to 9, which makes checking instant.
The 11s repeat the digit up to 9 x 11: 44, 55, 66. The 12s split neatly into 10s and 2s: 12 x 6 is 60 plus 12, which is 72. And every 4s fact is just double-double: for 4 x 7, double 7 to get 14, double again to get 28.
For the 7s, there is no shortcut, only reps, but there is a comfort: by the time a child reaches the 7s, most of the facts are already known from other tables. 7 x 2 came with the 2s, 7 x 5 with the 5s. Only a handful of facts, like 7 x 7 and 7 x 8, are genuinely new.
A one-week plan you can start today
Pick the next table your child has not mastered. Days one and two, run the flashcard set for that table twice a day, marking known facts off. Days three and four, keep one flashcard session and add a round of the times tables game on the same table. Day five, play the matching game and finish with one last flashcard run. If every card is instant, move to the next table next week; if not, repeat, and nothing is lost.
By the twelfth week or so, the whole grid is automatic, and everything built on top of it, from long multiplication to fractions, suddenly gets easier. Start with whichever set fits today at our flashcards for kids, and let the streak do the work. For the wider numbers toolkit, worksheets, games and fact decks together, our math practice for kids hub keeps everything on one page.