Most kids dread learning their times tables. Most parents dread teaching them. The good news: there's a relatively painless way to do it that takes about eight weeks of 10-minute daily practice. The bad news: there's no shortcut that lets you skip the daily practice.

Here's the plan.

Week 1: 2s, 5s, and 10s

Start with what kids already know from skip-counting. By the end of kindergarten, most kids can count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. Times tables are just renaming that skill. 5 × 4 is the same as "count by 5 four times: 5, 10, 15, 20."

Don't worry about formal flashcards yet. Just chant the tables out loud during car rides. By the end of week 1, your child should be able to answer any 2, 5, or 10 fact in under three seconds.

Week 2: 0s and 1s

These are gimmes. Anything times zero is zero. Anything times one is itself. Spend one day on each, then mix them with the previous tables for the rest of the week.

By end of week 2, your child knows roughly 50 of the 100 multiplication facts.

Week 3: 11s

The trick: for facts 11 × 1 through 11 × 9, the answer is just the digit doubled (11 × 7 = 77). For 11 × 10 = 110 and 11 × 11 = 121 and 11 × 12 = 132, it's a slightly different rule, but those are easy enough to memorize directly.

Week 4: 9s

The 9s have the best built-in tricks of any table:

Finger trick: Hold up ten fingers. To multiply 9 × 7, fold down your 7th finger. Fingers to the left = tens (6); fingers to the right = ones (3). Answer: 63.
Digits-add-to-9 pattern: 9 × 3 = 27 (2+7=9). 9 × 5 = 45 (4+5=9). 9 × 8 = 72 (7+2=9).

Use whichever trick clicks for your kid.

Drill with our 9 times table page.

Week 5: 4s

Doubling the doubles. 4 × 7 is the same as (2 × 7) + (2 × 7), or 2 × (2 × 7) = 2 × 14 = 28. Kids who learned 2s solidly find 4s come quickly.

Try the 4 times table.

Week 6: 3s

The 3s aren't as easy as 2s but aren't as hard as 6s, 7s, or 8s. They have a small skip-counting pattern (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18) that most kids pick up quickly with chanting.

Try the 3 times table.

Week 7: 6s, 7s, 8s — the hard middle

This is where most of the hand-wringing happens. But by now, your child already knows half the 6s, 7s, and 8s from the commutative property:

They know 6 × 2, 6 × 5, 6 × 9, 6 × 10 from previous weeks
The "new" 6 facts are really only 6×3, 6×4, 6×6, 6×7, 6×8 — that's 5 facts
Same for 7s: only 7×3, 7×4, 7×6, 7×7, 7×8 are new — 5 facts
And 8s: only 8×3, 8×4, 8×6, 8×7, 8×8 — 5 facts

That's 15 truly new facts spread across two weeks. Manageable.

The stickiest of all are 6×8, 7×8, and 9×6. If those persist past week 7, drill them in isolation with mnemonics — see our memorize multiplication facts post.

Week 8: 12s and mixed review

Twelves are mostly useful for time (12 hours, 12 months) and dozens. They're not always tested at the same level as the 0-10 tables, but they're worth knowing.

Spend the second half of week 8 on mixed-fact review — randomly pulling facts from any table — and on speed. By end of week 8, your child should clear 25 mixed facts in under a minute on our multiplication facts speed test.

Daily routine

Each day, 10 minutes broken into:

3 minutes: new facts for this week, in order
3 minutes: new facts for this week, in random order
4 minutes: mixed review of all previous weeks

The mixed review is what makes the facts permanent. Without it, kids forget the 4s while learning the 6s.

What if you fall off the plan?

You will. Vacations, sick days, life. The plan is a target, not a contract. If you miss a week, just resume where you left off. The eight weeks become ten or twelve, but the kid still gets there.

What matters most is the daily-ish habit. A kid who practices five days a week for ten minutes will outpace a kid who crams two hours every other Saturday. Spaced repetition is doing the heavy lifting.

When to declare victory

You're done when your child can answer any random multiplication fact in under three seconds with 90% accuracy. That's the fluency level that unlocks long division, fractions, and everything that comes after.

Don't ease up the moment they hit that bar — keep doing two minutes of mixed review a day for another month or two to cement it. After that, the facts are theirs for life.

The Easiest Way to Learn Times Tables: A Realistic 8-Week Plan