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Times tables practice at home that is different every day

What knowing a times table means, the order to learn the tables in, a two-week plan for one table, and what research says about timed practice and maths anxiety.

The EdProcto editorial teamWritten and checked against the research it cites. Last checked . How the guides are made

Guides · Testing yourself · · 12 min read

How do I help my child learn times tables at home?

Times tables practice at home works best as about five minutes on most days: one table at a time, one new fact a day mixed in among facts the child already answers within about three seconds, the right answer said straight after any miss, and the tables mixed together once each is learned. Add a timer only when answers are accurate.

Times tables practice at home goes wrong in one familiar way. The same sheet comes out, the child counts on fingers or guesses, somebody sighs, and a week later 7 × 8 is no nearer. None of that is the child's fault. It is what happens when practice asks for speed before a fact is in memory.

Most studies below were run in schools, and none tested a parent at a kitchen table, so nothing here promises a school result. For the practice itself, EdProcto's page for parents has a Times tables kit that builds its questions afresh at every opening, and the wider evening routine is in ten minutes a day.

What does it mean to know a times table?

A child knows a times table when each fact in it comes out right within about three seconds, in any order, without counting up. Maki et al. (2024) counted a multiplication fact as known only if the right answer came within 3 seconds, and scored a late answer as a wrong one. Reciting the table in order is a different skill.

Counting up is a stage, and no reason for a telling-off. Lemaire and Siegler (1995) tested French second graders three times in the year they learned single-digit multiplication. Each time the children used several strategies and kept repeated addition for the hardest problems. Fingers show which facts to practise next.

What England's multiplication tables check asks

The Standards and Testing Agency (2025) sets it out in a leaflet for parents, checked on 9 October 2026. Year 4 children take it in June, on a screen: 25 questions on the tables up to 12, with 6 seconds for each answer. There is no pass mark, and parents are told they need do nothing extra to prepare.

Which times tables should a child learn first?

Learn them in the order the child's school teaches them, so home practice follows the teaching. England's national curriculum fixes that order by year (Department for Education, 2021): the 2, 5 and 10 tables in year 2, the 3, 4 and 8 tables in year 3, and every table up to 12 × 12 by the end of year 4, when children are 8 to 9.

Its notes tie the 10 table to place value and the 5 table to the clock face, and link 2, 4 and 8 by doubling. Within year 4 it sets no order: 6, 7, 9, 11, 12 is a common teaching order, not a researched one.

Year 2 also teaches that two numbers multiply in either order, and that rule shrinks the job. Leave out the 1 times table, count 6 × 7 and 7 × 6 once, and 66 facts remain. The count is ours:

Stage in England Tables New facts
Year 2 2, 5, 10 30
Year 3 3, 4, 8 21
Year 4 6, 7, 9, 11, 12 15

Of the twelve facts in the 6 times table, 6 × 1 is trivial and six more were met in earlier tables, turned round. Only five are new, those with 6, 7, 9, 11 and 12, and showing a worried child that list changes the size of the task.

What does the research say builds recall of multiplication facts?

It supports practice in which the child produces the answer, is shown the right one when needed, and returns to it often. Codding et al. (2011) pooled 17 single-case studies of basic-fact fluency, 55 pupils in all, and found the largest effects for drill and practice with modelling: the adult shows the fact before the child practises it. Our guide to retrieval practice explains why producing an answer strengthens memory.

Often beats long. Codding et al. (2016) randomly assigned 101 pupils in grades 2 to 4 who were behind in maths to arithmetic practice four times, twice or once a week, with total time held equal. Four times a week gave clear benefits on the measure closest to what was practised, and frequency predicted nothing on the most complex calculations.

A few new facts among known ones. In incremental rehearsal, one unknown fact is folded in among facts the child knows, so most answers are right and the new fact keeps returning. For 29 pupils in grades 3 and 4 with low maths skills, Burns et al. (2019) found it left more facts retained than a traditional drill, at about the same cost in time. The finding is not unanimous: Adams and Maki (2023), with 36 pupils, found no difference in retention, the best fluency scores after incremental rehearsal, and the traditional drill most efficient.

Few errors. Maki et al. (2024) taught six pupils four new facts a session. Each retained more under whichever version of the method gave them fewer errors, and facts only tested, never taught, were mostly not learned. After a miss the adult stated the whole fact and asked it straight back.

When should the tables be mixed together?

Mix a table in with the others as soon as each of its facts comes within three seconds. While every question begins "6 ×", a child can lean on the one before. Shuffled, each has to be answered from memory of that fact alone.

The evidence for mixing in maths comes from older learners. Rohrer and Taylor (2007) gave college students several kinds of problem to practise, one kind at a time or all jumbled. Tested after a week, the jumbled group scored far higher. That was neither times tables nor children, so treat it as a direction.

Mixing also exposes look-alikes. De Visscher and Noël (2014) measured how far each multiplication fact shares its digits with the others, and that overlap predicted which facts third graders, fifth graders and undergraduates answered worse. It may be why 6 × 7, 6 × 8 and 7 × 8 (our example) keep going wrong.

EdProcto's Times tables kit does this mixing on a screen.

Does timing times tables practice help or harm?

Timing helps once answers are accurate, and the claim that it causes maths anxiety has not been shown. Both halves rest on thin evidence.

For a clock. Fuchs et al. (2013) tutored at-risk first graders for 16 weeks and gave five minutes of each session to practice, speeded for 195 children and unspeeded for 190. Speeded practice gave stronger learning on arithmetic and two-digit calculation, and no difference on number knowledge or word problems. For tables, Woodward (2006) taught 58 fourth graders through timed drills alone or timed drills with strategies. Both groups reached automatic recall, and the strategy group applied the facts better.

Against. Ashcraft (2002) summed up the work on maths anxiety: highly anxious people avoid maths, the anxiety takes up working memory mid-calculation, and its effects show on timed tests. Its causes, he wrote, were undetermined. Caviola et al. (2017) then reviewed 19 articles on time pressure in arithmetic and found only three that varied the time limit to test the effect of maths anxiety. They concluded that assuming time pressure causes maths anxiety has no evidential support at present.

So a timer belongs to the second half of learning a table. Bring it in when the child is right nearly every time, let them race their own last score, and put it away on any evening it brings tears. Lack of proof of harm is not proof that timing suits every child.

A two-week plan for one times table

Two weeks of five-minute sessions, five days a week, makes ten sessions and 50 minutes: enough to add the five new facts of the 6 times table at one a day and then mix them. The figures are our arithmetic, not a tested programme. One new fact a day is deliberately fewer than the four a session in Maki et al. (2024), whose sessions averaged over 21 minutes with a trained adult.

Write the table's twelve facts on cards, answers on the back.

Days What happens Minutes
1 Sort the cards into "within three seconds" and "not yet". Teach 6 × 6. 5
2 to 5 Ask yesterday's fact first, then teach one new fact. 20
6 All twelve cards, shuffled. Any miss is tomorrow's new fact. 5
7 and 8 The facts turned round (7 × 6) and as division (42 ÷ 6). 10
9 and 10 Mixed with earlier tables, on cards or in EdProcto's Times tables kit. 10

Folding one new fact in

  1. Say the new fact and ask for it back. Then show one known card.
  2. Ask the new fact again, then show two known cards.
  3. Carry on: the new fact, then three known cards, then four, then five.
  4. Stop. The new fact has been answered five times in twenty cards, and the child could give the other fifteen answers.
  5. Next day, ask it cold before anything else. On a screen, EdProcto's maths expression shape has the answer typed, not picked from a list.

This shortens incremental rehearsal, which in that study ran on to eight known cards.

How do you tell a slip from a fact not yet known?

Ask the fact again later in the session and once more the next day: a slip comes back right and fast both times, and a fact not yet known does not.

  • Wrong once, then right within three seconds twice: a slip. Leave it in the mixed pile.
  • Right, but after counting or a long pause: not yet stored. Teach it as new tomorrow.
  • The same wrong answer on two days: a neighbour's answer has stuck. Teach it as new, away from the neighbour.

This is a rule of thumb, not a tested instrument. The second line matters most: a slow right answer looks like success on a worksheet, yet the fact is still being worked out. The retest is borrowed from Maki et al. (2024), who opened each session with the last session's facts and taught again any not answered in time.

What do you do when a child is stuck on the same three facts?

Take those three out of the mixed pile and teach each as a new fact, one a day, among facts the child finds easy. Facts stay stuck when they are only ever met as misses.

Give each a route from a fact the child owns, such as "six sixes are 36, and one more six is 42" (our example). Strategies did not hold recall back in Woodward (2006), so a route is no detour.

Three facts out of 66 is under 5% of the grid. If a fortnight changes nothing, tell the teacher which facts and what you tried. That is information for the school, never a verdict on the child.

How does EdProcto fit into times tables practice?

EdProcto is the best tool for the mixing stage, because that stage needs what paper cannot give: different questions every day, with the right answer on the screen the moment a wrong one is typed. Those are the two conditions the studies above return to.

  • The Times tables kit. For ages 7 to 9: twelve mixed questions from the two to twelve times tables, each answered by typing.
  • New each time. The questions are made by rule, in code, whenever the kit is opened, so no sheet can be memorised.
  • The reason at once. After each answer the child sees the product and the tables it sits in. The misses are then listed, with a retry of those alone, and the kit is there to take again in a few days.
  • No clock. The kit sets no time limit. A separate Mental arithmetic sprint, for ages 8 and up, gives ten sums at ten seconds each.

Its limit: the kit has no setting for a single table, so a child still on the 2, 5 and 10 tables will meet mostly untaught questions. Stay with cards, or the early number kits answered on big buttons, until more tables are in. A Division facts kit, for ages 8 to 9, asks the same facts backwards.

The rule-made drills are free without limit. Questions written from a page of your child's own maths book, pasted in on the home page, come from a monthly allowance that is larger on the Learner plan than on Free. The pricing page has both.

Quick questions

How long should times tables practice at home take?

About five minutes, on most days. In one trial, four sessions a week beat one or two on the skill practised (Codding et al., 2016).

Do timed times tables tests cause maths anxiety?

That has not been shown. A review found no evidential support for the assumption, and too few studies to settle it (Caviola et al., 2017). Time a child only on facts they already get right.

What is the multiplication tables check in England?

An on-screen check for year 4 pupils each June: 25 questions on the tables up to 12, 6 seconds each, no pass mark.

Is there times tables practice that changes every day?

Yes. EdProcto's Times tables kit makes twelve new mixed questions each time it is opened and shows the answer after each. The page for parents explains how to pick a kit by age.

References

EdProcto for parents

Ten minutes a day, made fresh every day.

Parents helping their children practise at home.

See the page for parents

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