Must Have FREE Printable Multiplication Games

These Free Printable Multiplication Games are perfect for building recall and fluency of times tables facts. Fun engaging multiplication spinner games from 1x to 12x that your kids will love!

Kids seem to find memorizing their multiplication facts, or times tables a challenge? You’re not alone! As a Numeracy Coach, I am always being asked how to introduce multiplication to kids. Based on my experience, kids don’t know their tables because they don’t actually UNDERSTAND what tables are.

Generally, they have been rushed into rote learning multiplication facts before learning the foundation skills of multiplication. In this post, I’ll explain how to introduce multiplication to your kids. There’s even a set of FREE Multiplication Spinner Games for you at the end of the post!

How To Introduce Multiplication

It’s so important not to start multiplication drills, or place emphasis on the recall of times tables facts until the beginning multiplication skills have been taught.

Start to introduce your students to multiplication by teaching them about early multiplication strategies that are built on additive understanding. This includes teaching students how to ‘multiply’ using:

Repeated addition
Groups of
Arrays

Read Our Related Posts: Tips For Teaching Repeated Addition

Multiplication As Repeated Addition

Focussing on repeated addition and ‘making groups of’ first will build on what your students already know. From here kids will naturally transition into multiplicative thinking, using arrays. By providing your learners with opportunities to solve problems that require them to use repeated addition and groups of, your kids will soon see the need for more efficient ways of calculating.

This will lead them into using arrays. Once the link between arrays and multiplication has been realised, e.g. 3 rows of four is the same as 3 x 4, students are ready to start working on memorizing times tables facts! Following this sequence will lessen the stress of learning & Memorizing Times Tables Facts. Scroll to the end of this post for your FREE Set of Printable Multiplication Games!

Multiplication Games Printable Product Image

Multiplication Strategies KIT Product Image

Printable Multiplication Games

There are so many ways to learn multiplication facts. But worksheets and flashcards can be boring and times tables competitions to see who’s the fastest, are intimidating and just WRONG!

I find that kids learn best through games, as it takes away the pressure, stress and public humiliation of not being the fastest at multiplication. Using games is much more fun, they are a sure thing when it comes to keeping students engaged, motivated and on task compared to just chanting a bunch of facts.

So I have created a set of Spinner Multiplication Games to help students remember the facts from x1 to x12. The kids find the Spinners so much fun, but they can be played using a paperclip and a pencil too! I differentiate the activities by letting students draw an array on graph paper or use a calculator to check their answers at the end.

These games are low prep and can be used in any classroom. Students can play them on their own, with a partner in math rotations. They are great for sending home as homework. You can laminate them or use in a dry erase pocket or they can be printed into a student booklet! Whatever works best for you. You’ll find the link to these FREE printable Multiplication Games at the end of the post.

You can find more in our related post: The Guide To Teaching Multiplication

How To Play Spinner Multiplication Games

Once students understand multiplicative understanding they are ready for LOTS and LOTS of practice to help them memorize basic multiplication facts. You can NEVER have too many multiplication activities so here’s one more set to add to your teacher library. Best of all it’s FREE.

In this printable, you will find times tables practice for x1 – x12 multiplication facts. Each multiplication fact or times table includes 3 spinner activities on 1 sheet.

Spin and multiply – Students spin the spinner, write the number in the square space and work out the answer. They continue to Spin until they have landed on all the numbers 1-12. If they spin the same number they don’t write it down.
Game 2 will help your students to link multiplication to the related division facts. The Spinner has the answers to each multiplication fact written on it. Students spin it and then write the number into a division number sentence. So they are using a multiplication fact to help them create a division fact. e.g. 2 x 3 = 6 so 6 = 3 divided by 2
In the final game, students create corresponding multiplication facts using the commutative law.

There are 3 spinner games for each times table from 1x to 12x facts. Click the image to get the download!

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