Why can't my kids remember their multiplication facts and how to help them!

Vivid memories of learning multiplication facts? Did you learn a song for every fact? Use the nines finger trick?  Times tests; public competitive games and visible displays of who has and who has not masters groups of facts? Is the thought of this giving you sweaty palms? I bet this conventional approach to learning times tables has led you to doubt your own mathematical ability? 

Why Don’t Those Multiplication Facts Stick?

You’ve seen it before: a child knows their times tables… until they don’t. After a school break or a shift in focus, those “learned” facts vanish. Why? Because cramming and rote memorisation might get facts in—but they don’t help facts stay.

🎯 Here’s the hard truth:
Most learners need far more than repetition or willpower to master multiplication. In fact, just memorising often leads to fragile knowledge that slips away when it’s needed most.

💥 And the stakes are high:
Struggling with multiplication is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in maths. Without fluent recall of these core facts, children find it hard to keep up—and quickly lose confidence. Cue the “I can’t do maths” spiral (Ginsburg & Baroody, 1990).

🧩 We need a better way.
The research is clear: children need a structured, concept-rich, and well-sequenced approach to multiplication—one that builds both understanding and fluency.

Because when we leave it to chance, we risk leaving children behind.

Yes, practice matters. But meaningful practice—paired with strategies that strengthen memory, encourage number sense, and support long-term retention—is what truly leads to mastery.

🚫 Why Facts Don’t Stick:

 The conventional approach makes learning the basic multiplication facts unduly difficult and anxiety provoking. The focus on speed and memorising individual facts  "robs children of mathematical proficiency. For example, it discourages looking for patterns and relationships (conceptual learning), deflects efforts to reason out answers (strategic mathematical thinking), and undermines interest in mathematics and confidence in mathematical ability (a productive disposition). Indeed, such an approach even undermines computational fluency and creates the very symptoms of learning difficulties. "

Why Some Kids Struggle to Master Multiplication Facts (Even After Practice)

It’s not just about effort. There are real reasons why multiplication facts don’t always stick — and it’s not a reflection of a child’s intelligence or potential. Here are some of the most common barriers:

🔹 2. Gaps in opportunity or ineffective practice
Some children simply haven’t had access to high-quality teaching or consistent, targeted practice. That doesn’t mean they can’t master the facts — just that they need a different, more supportive approach.

🔹 3. Underdeveloped number sense
If a child hasn’t had enough chances to build number sense in the early years, formal maths can feel like a foreign language. Research shows that gaps in everyday mathematical experiences (like sorting, counting, or estimating) can make school maths harder to access later on.

🔹 4. Missing the foundations of addition
Multiplication is just fast adding — but if a child hasn’t mastered addition strategies, times tables don’t make much sense. Maths builds in layers, and if one layer is wobbly, the next becomes shaky too.

🔹 5. Over-reliance on slow strategies
If children are still counting up on fingers or tapping out skip-counting sequences for every question, they’re working much harder than they need to. These strategies are okay at first, but they’re too slow for fluent recall.

🔹 6. Lack of automaticity
To truly master multiplication, children need to be able to recall facts automatically — that is, without conscious effort. This is just like phonics: we don’t want children decoding every single letter forever. At some point, the goal is fluency.

🧠 And here’s the science bit:
Automaticity is built through overlearning (Willingham, 2004). That means getting a fact right once isn’t enough — it needs to be practised repeatedly, in varied ways, until it’s embedded in long-term memory.

📅 Spaced practice matters
To make knowledge stick, we can’t cram it in and forget it. We need to review it regularly after it’s been mastered — this helps avoid forgetting and keeps facts fresh and flexible.

✅ A Better Path Forward:

If you’re bamboozled by how you can help your child remember those all-important tables (and yes, they are important! More on that later…) and you’re looking for more effective ways to boost your child's confidence, understanding and achieve mastery of multiplication facts then READ ON!

1. Start with what children already know. Use a one-to-one “inter‑view” to uncover thinking and listening for ideas—not right or wrong answers.

2. Focus on structure and patterns, not isolated facts. When students grasp relationships, memorisation becomes natural.

3. Plan for retrieval, spacing, and mix-up practice. These cognitive strategies help move knowledge into long-term memory—and keep it there.

4. Use gradual rehearsal. Focus on small groups of facts at a time and revisit them strategically to maintain fluency.

That’s the philosophy behind Mastering Multiplication: Concrete, Connected, Confident — a toolkit built on educational science, designed to help children build not just speed, but deep understanding and lifelong confidence.

Pedagogically perfect because unlike other resources it builds on what the learner already knows and helps learners build a rich and well-interconnected web of factual, strategic (procedural), and conceptual knowledge.

A more connected, meaningful ways to Master Multiplication... 

✅ What to Do Now — And How to Make It Stick

Once your learner has started making sense of multiplication patterns, it’s time to build that knowledge into something lasting.

💥 Focus on a few facts at a time.
Cramming doesn’t work. Instead, use incremental rehearsal—gradually mixing new facts with ones they already know. This gives the brain the right kind of challenge.

🔁 Space it out.
Revisit facts over time with spaced practice. It might feel harder—but that’s a good thing. Struggling a little to remember is how learning deepens.

🧠 Build structure, not just speed.
Rather than memorising isolated facts, help learners see patterns and relationships. When the facts connect, they stick.

🎯 Practice with purpose.
The goal isn’t speed drills or “getting it right” once. It’s getting it right repeatedly, and in different contexts. That’s how we move facts from short-term to long-term memory—and actually make them usable.

📚 Backed by research:

• Meaningful, connected memorisation leads to better retention and transfer of knowledge.

• It also helps kids apply what they know to new or trickier combinations—without starting from scratch each time.