3 Times Table Worksheets

What is the quickest way to learn the 3 times table?

Double the number and add one more of it. 3 x 7 is 14 with a 7 put back, which is 21. Then check the answer by adding its digits: every multiple of three lands on 3, 6 or 9. Chant the twelve facts, answer them shuffled, mix them with other tables, then reach for a clock.

Double it, then put one group back

Nobody meets this table with nothing in hand, because every child can double. Three of something is two of it with one more added on: 3 x 6 is 12 and one more 6, so 18. 3 x 9 is 18 and one more 9, so 27. Two easy steps instead of one hard one. It is slower than remembering and it never fails, which is what a child needs on the morning they go blank in the middle of a test.

Add the digits and you always land on 3, 6 or 9

Take any answer in this table and add its digits together. 12 gives 3. 15 gives 6. 18 gives 9. 21 gives 3 again, 24 gives 6, 27 gives 9, and the little sum goes round those three for the whole run. When the first sum has two digits, add again: 132 gives 6 that way.

That turns a page of marking into a glance. An answer whose digits do not come back to 3, 6 or 9 is wrong before anyone works out what it should have been, and a child can run the check on their own sheet with no chart and no adult. It has one honest limit: the test says a number is somewhere in the threes, not that it is one of the twelve facts on the chart, so 39 and 42 both pass it and neither is here.

The rule that says when three divides

The same idea, pointed the other way. To find out whether three goes into a number of any size, add its digits and ask whether three goes into that. 471 gives 12, and 12 gives 3, so three divides 471. 472 gives 13, and 13 gives 4, so it does not. The rule works at any length, which is why it outlives the times table it came from and turns up again in fractions, in factor trees and in every quick check of a long multiplication.

The last digits use all ten, then start over

Write the first ten answers in a line: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30. Read only the last digit of each one and you get 3, 6, 9, 2, 5, 8, 1, 4, 7, 0. That is every digit there is, each used exactly once. Then 33 ends in 3, 36 ends in 6, and the whole cycle begins again.

There is no shortcut hiding in that, and that is the point of pointing it out. The 2s, the 5s and the 10s give their answers away by the last digit alone. The 3s never do, so a child who has been leaning on endings has to learn these twelve properly instead.

Turn an answer round and it is still in the threes

3 x 4 is 12 and 3 x 7 is 21: the same two digits the other way round. It is not a coincidence. Reversing the digits of a number does not change what they add up to, so a multiple of three stays a multiple of three. 15 reversed is 51, which is three seventeens. 24 reversed is 42, which is three fourteens.

The only pair that both fit on this chart is 12 and 21, and they are also the two most often written for each other by a child in a hurry.

Three sides, three wheels, three of anything

3 is a number a child can see without being taught it. A triangle has 3 sides, a tricycle has 3 wheels, and a set of triplets is 3 children. Two triangles is 6 sides, five is 15 and ten is 30. The word problems on this page count groups that exist rather than groups invented to fill a sum. Three is also odd, which is why the answers alternate odd, even, odd, even the whole way from 3 to 36.

The threes sit underneath the sixes and the nines

Learn this table and three more come most of the way for free. Six is two threes, so the 3 times table doubled is the 6 times table: 3 x 7 = 21 and 6 x 7 = 42. Nine is three threes, so the 9s are these answers taken three times: 3 x 4 = 12 and 9 x 4 = 36. Twelve works the same way, four threes at a time. That is three tables resting on this one, which is the real argument for doing it properly before anything else.

Print them in this order

Day one is the chart and the in-order ladder, and nothing after them. One is for looking at and the other is for filling in, and between them a child meets all twelve facts without being asked anything they have not just read.

Day two is a shuffled sheet. The drop in speed between the two days is the honest measure of what stayed, and it is usually a surprise. Stay there until the shuffled page comes back as quickly as the ordered one did.

Missing numbers after that, where 3 x ? = 27 is a division that nobody has named yet. Then the mixed pages, because a sheet of pure 3s lets a child stop reading the first number and answer on autopilot.

Timed grids last. Doubling and adding one more group is honest arithmetic and it takes a couple of seconds, which is a couple of seconds too many under a clock, so speed comes only once the facts are simply there.

Page two is the answer key

Every sheet here that asks a question is a two page PDF. Page two repeats page one exactly, in the same positions, with the answers set in green, so marking is a matter of holding the two side by side. Nobody has to work out 3 x 9 to see whether 27 is what was written down.

Three sheets carry no key and need none, because their answers are printed as part of the design: the chart, the desk strips and the tracing page. The flashcards spend page two on the card backs, mirrored column by column, so a single double sided print gives a deck with every answer behind its own fact.

Six groups, 80 sheets

They are meant to be worked roughly in the order they appear: the table set out in order, the table shuffled, the table read backwards as missing numbers and divisions, the table hidden among the other tables, pictures for anyone who still needs to see what 3 x 7 is, and the timed grids.

Everything prints identically on US Letter and on A4, in black and white, with no sign-up and no watermark. Take one sheet or take all 80, for one child or for thirty.

Where to go after the threes

Double every answer here and you have the 6 times table. Take them three times over and you have the 9 times table, where the digits come back to nine every time rather than to three, six or nine. Neither shortcut is any help with the 7 times table, which has no pattern of its own to lean on, or the 8 times table, which gets where it is going by doubling three times instead. All the rest are in multiplication worksheets, the whole grid on a single sheet is the multiplication chart, and there is a printable poster for every table from 1 to 12 in the times table charts set. Read the other way round, division worksheets and skip counting worksheets run on exactly the facts this page drills.