How Do I Make My Child Learn Times Tables?

Because reciting a table teaches your child the sequence, not the facts. A child who has chanted the seven times table two hundred times can usually produce it from the start - "seven, fourteen, twenty-one..." - and still cannot answer "what is seven eights?" without running the whole list from the beginning. That is not laziness or a weak memory. It is exactly what was practised: a song, not a set of retrievable answers.

You can test this in about thirty seconds. Ask your child for 7 x 8. Watch their lips. If they start somewhere earlier in the table and count up, the table has been memorised as a sequence. If the answer arrives whole, it has been learnt as a fact. Most children whose parents search this question are in the first group, and every additional chanting session deepens the sequence rather than breaking it.

The rest of this post is about what to do instead: which tables genuinely need to be known, the order that makes each one easier than the last, and a weekly rhythm that fits into a normal evening. If your child is in Class 3 or Class 4, this is the right moment - it is precisely when tables stop being a topic and start being a prerequisite for everything else.

Fewer than most parents assume, and later than most parents fear. NCERT's current primary sequence introduces multiplication as an idea long before it expects fluent recall, and the useful milestones are these:

• Class 2 - multiplication as repeated addition and equal groups. Tables of 2, 5 and 10 through skip-counting. No pressure on recall speed at all. See Class 2 maths.
• Class 3 - the tables that matter most, built rather than chanted: 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10, with a working understanding of what a product means. See Class 3 maths.
• Class 4 - tables to 10 reasonably fluent, because multi-digit multiplication and division now depend on them. This is the year a gap starts to cost visible marks. See Class 4 maths.
• Class 5 - tables to 12 comfortable, extending to 15 and 20 for the children who will need them. See Class 5 maths.

Indian schools commonly ask for tables to 20, which is further than most curricula abroad go, and it is why our times tables game runs to 20 rather than stopping at 12. But the tables to 10 carry almost all of the practical load. A child fluent to 10 and shaky at 17 is in a completely different position from a child shaky at 7.

Not 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Teaching in numerical order means the hardest tables arrive when your child is already tired of the exercise. Teach them in order of difficulty instead, so that each one you learn shrinks the ones still to come.

Order	Table	Why it is easier here
1	10, then 5, then 2	Patterns a child can see, not facts to store - already a third of the multiplication grid covered
2	4	Just 2, twice - 4 x 7 is 2 x 7 doubled, so it is barely new material
3	3, then 6	6 is 3 doubled, the same trick as above, and your child now expects it
4	9	The digits of every answer add to nine (18, 27, 36...), and 9 x n is always 10n minus n - children love this one
5	8	4 doubled, or 2 doubled three times
6	7 - genuinely last	No pattern and no shortcut, but by now most of its facts were already met from the other side (7 x 4 as 4 x 7). What is left is 7 x 7, 7 x 8 and 7 x 9 - three facts, not twelve

That last row is the one worth carrying away. Multiplication is commutative - 6 x 8 and 8 x 6 are the same fact - so the grid of "144 facts to learn" is really about 30 once you remove the reversals and the easy patterns. Telling a child that out loud changes how the task feels.

Splitting means breaking a fact you do not know into two you do. Asked for 7 x 8, a child who has been taught to split thinks "7 x 8 is 7 x 4, twice" - or "8 x 5 is 40, plus 8 x 2 is 16, so 56". It is slower than instant recall for about a fortnight, and then it is not, because the facts they keep rebuilding start arriving whole.

Two more worked splits, so the pattern is clear

Asked for 6 x 9, a child who has 6 x 10 solidly (60, from the pattern table above) can reason "6 x 9 is one group of 6 less than 6 x 10, so 60 minus 6 is 54." Asked for 8 x 6, the same child might go the other way: "8 x 6 is 8 x 3 doubled, and 8 x 3 is 24, so 48." Notice that both routes lean on a fact already secure rather than starting from nothing - the child is never truly stuck, only slower on some days than others. That is the entire point: a route to the answer that does not depend on a single memorised fact holding up under pressure.

This matters more than it looks. A child who can only recite is stuck the moment recall fails - in an exam, under time pressure, exactly when it matters. A child who can split always has a route to the answer, so a forgotten fact costs eight seconds rather than the question. And splitting is the same skill that later carries mental multiplication of larger numbers, so nothing is wasted.

It is also what the current NCERT books actually do. They build tables from equal groups and skip-counting rather than presenting them as lists to be memorised - which is why a child being drilled at home in a way their book does not use often ends up more confused, not less.

Ten minutes a day, five days, on one table at a time. Not thirty minutes on Sunday.

What Monday's "build it" session actually looks like

Take the table of 4, and use real objects if they are handy - four biscuits, four times, laid out in groups your child counts herself: "4, 8, 12, 16." Ask her to say what she notices before you say anything - most children spot the skip-counting pattern themselves within a minute or two. Then connect it explicitly to the table of 2 she already knows: "4 x 3 is double 2 x 3, so it's double 6, which is 12." The goal of this one session is not speed and not even full recall - it is that she can explain, in her own words, why 4 x 3 is 12, rather than simply agreeing that it is. That explanation is what Tuesday's out-of-order questioning actually tests.

• Monday - build it. Take one table and construct it with objects, on paper, or by skip-counting aloud. Not recitation: construction. Your child should be able to explain why 6 x 4 is 24, not just that it is.
• Tuesday - out of order. Ask the same facts in random order. This is the step that converts a sequence into facts, and it is the step most home practice skips entirely.
• Wednesday - backwards. "What times 6 gives 42?" This is division wearing a different hat, and it makes the Class 4 division work far easier when it arrives.
• Thursday - mixed with last week's table. Interleaving two tables feels harder and is measurably better than practising either alone.
• Friday - timed, and only now. Speed last, once the method is solid. Our times tables game is built for exactly this slot, and the mental maths sprint mixes tables with everything else.

Two rules that matter more than the schedule. Stop while it is still going well - ending on three correct answers is worth more than pushing to the point of tears. And never time a child who is not yet accurate; speed applied to a shaky method just makes the errors faster.

If several weeks of this have changed nothing, the tables are usually not the problem - something underneath them is. The most common causes, in rough order of frequency:

• Addition is not yet automatic. Splitting requires adding 40 and 16 without effort. If that itself is slow, tables cannot be built on top of it. Go back to addition fluency first; it is a faster fix than it sounds.
• Multiplication is not understood as an idea. Ask your child to draw 4 x 3. If they cannot, no amount of table practice will help - the meaning has to come first, which is exactly the order NCERT uses.
• Anxiety, usually from timed tests. A child who has been publicly timed and found wanting will freeze on tables specifically. The fix is to remove the clock entirely for a month.
• An undiagnosed difficulty. Persistent trouble with number facts, alongside difficulty telling left from right or reading a clock, is worth raising with your school - not to label your child, but because the right support is different.

If you are not sure which of these it is, that is a reasonable thing to want help identifying. Our post on what to do when a child is weak in maths covers how to trace a gap back to the year it started, and signs your child needs a tutor covers when outside help is genuinely the answer and when it is not.

Worth answering, because a child who is asked to memorise something with no visible purpose resists it, and a parent who cannot answer "why do I need this" loses the argument. Tables are not an end in themselves. They are the thing that stops a child's working memory from filling up during a harder problem.

Consider what a Class 5 child does when dividing 3,456 by 8. If each step requires rebuilding a multiplication fact, the child is holding the remainder, the position in the sum and a table computation at once - and working memory simply runs out, so an error appears somewhere in the middle. The child is then told they are "careless in division" when the actual problem is upstream and has nothing to do with division at all.

This is why a table gap does not look like a table gap. It surfaces as:

• Slow, error-prone long division from Class 4 onwards.
• Fractions that will not simplify, because finding a common factor requires recognising one - see Class 5 maths.
• Word problems abandoned halfway, because the arithmetic interrupted the reasoning.
• Class 6 to 8 algebra feeling impossible, when the actual blockage is that every coefficient has to be recomputed - Class 7.

Telling a child this out loud helps more than it sounds. "We are doing this so division stops being annoying" is a reason. "Because you have to know your tables" is not.

Indian schools commonly ask for these, most curricula abroad do not, and parents reasonably wonder whether it is worth the effort. The short answer: useful, not urgent, and far easier than they look if the first ten are solid.

Almost none of 11 to 20 needs to be memorised as new material, because each one splits into two facts your child already has.

Table	How to split it	Worked example
11	For single digits, the digit twice. Above that, 10n + n	11 x 7 = 77; 11 x 12 = 120 + 12
12	10n + 2n	12 x 7 = 70 + 14
15	10n + half of 10n	15 x 8 = 80 + 40
20	Double it, then add a zero	20 x 7 = 14, add a zero, 140 - every child finds this one easy
13, 14, 16-19	10n plus a fact from the first ten tables	14 x 6 = 60 + (4 x 6) = 84 - nothing here is new learning

So the honest position is: get to 10 properly, then treat 11 to 20 as splitting practice rather than memorisation. Our times tables game runs to 20 for exactly this reason - not because a child must recall 17 x 8 instantly, but because meeting it repeatedly builds the splitting habit that makes it quick.

A five-minute check at the kitchen table will usually tell you, and it is worth doing before committing to weeks of practice on the wrong thing.

1. Ask six facts out of order, from across different tables: 6 x 7, 4 x 8, 9 x 6, 3 x 7, 8 x 8, 7 x 9. Note not just whether the answers come, but how.
2. Watch the method. Answer arrives whole - the fact is known. Lips move counting up - it is a sequence, not a fact. Long pause then a correct answer - splitting, which is fine and will speed up. Guessing - the fact is not there at all.
3. Then ask one division: "what times 7 gives 42?" Children who can multiply but not reverse it have a genuine gap that shows up hard in Class 4.
4. Then a two-step problem: "six packets of eight biscuits, shared between four children." If the tables are fine but this collapses, the problem is not tables at all - it is reading the problem, and that is a different fix.

That last step matters. Plenty of children sent for "tables practice" actually have a comprehension problem in maths, and more table drilling makes no difference at all. Our post on children weak in maths works through separating those causes, and studying hard but getting low marks covers the case where effort is not the missing piece.

Charts and small rewards genuinely help at Class 2 to 4 - a visible record of progress is motivating at that age, and there is nothing wrong with a sticker. Two things to be careful about.

Reward the practice, not the score. A reward tied to getting twenty right punishes a child on a bad day for something largely outside their control, and quietly teaches that the goal is the number rather than the learning. A reward for having done the ten minutes is safer and works just as well.

Be very careful with competition, especially between siblings. Racing an older sibling is demoralising by construction, and racing a classmate imports exactly the public-performance anxiety that makes children freeze. If your child enjoys competing, competing against their own previous time is the version that does not backfire - which is how our mental maths sprint is set up.

And the thing worth more than any reward: notice out loud when something that used to be hard has become easy. "You did not have to think about seven eights that time" is a specific observation about progress, and children believe specific observations in a way they do not believe general praise.

The method does not change - build, then out of order, then backwards, then interleaved, then timed still works exactly the same way. What changes is the urgency and, often, the shame attached to it, and both are worth addressing directly rather than pretending the situation is the same as a Class 3 child starting fresh.

Two things are usually true by this age that were not true earlier. First, the tables gap has been quietly compounding for years by Class 7 - algebra, fractions and ratio have all been built on top of a shaky foundation, so fixing tables alone will not immediately fix the marks, even though it removes the block underneath them. Expect the wider maths to improve over a term, not overnight, once tables are solid. Second, an older child is often acutely aware that this is "something younger children know", which makes the practice itself uncomfortable in a way it was not for a seven-year-old.

What helps specifically at this age: frame it as removing a specific inefficiency rather than as remedial work - "we're speeding up something you do slowly" lands very differently from "you never learned your tables". Keep the practice private, away from siblings who may already know them. And be honest that the payoff is real: an older child who closes this gap in a month often sees a bigger jump in maths confidence than a younger one, because so much more current work was being slowed down by it.

Built, not chanted - the sequence above is close to what a teacher would do, spread across a few weeks and adjusted to what your child already has. The difference a teacher makes is mostly diagnostic: knowing within one class whether the problem is the tables, the addition underneath them, or the meaning of multiplication itself, and starting at the right one.

Free things you can use tonight, with no sign-up: the times tables game runs to 20 because Indian schools ask for it, the worksheet generator produces a fresh printable sheet with a separate answer key, and there are printable worksheets by class with the answers on the page.

If you would rather someone looked at it properly, the free assessment takes 20 minutes and will tell you which of the four causes above is actually in play. Fees are published by class - nothing is held back until you enquire.