4 Times Table Worksheets

How do you learn the 4 times table?

Double it, then double it again. 4 x 7 is 7 doubled to 14 and doubled once more to 28, and the same two steps work on every fact here. Then check the last digit: every answer is even, and it ends in 4, 8, 2, 6 or 0. Chant the twelve, answer them shuffled, then use a clock.

Double, then double again

Nobody meets this table empty handed, because every child can double. Four of something is two of it taken twice: 4 x 6 is 6 doubled to 12 and doubled to 24. 4 x 9 is 9 doubled to 18 and doubled to 36. Two easy steps instead of one hard one, done in the head with nothing written down. It is slower than remembering and it never fails, which is exactly what is needed on the morning a child goes blank in the middle of a test.

Every answer is even, and there are only five endings

Write the first ten answers in a line: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40. Read only the last digit of each and you get 4, 8, 2, 6, 0, and then 4, 8, 2, 6, 0 again. Those five are every even digit there is, used in a fixed order, and they come round twice before the chart runs out. 44 ends in 4 and 48 ends in 8, which starts the run for a third time.

So the check on this page is quick and it is worth teaching: an odd answer is wrong before anyone works out what it should have been. The honest limit is the other half of it. A last digit of 8 narrows nothing down, because 8, 28 and 48 all end that way, and half the numbers a child meets are even without being anywhere near this table.

Halve it twice and you have divided by 4

Doubling twice has an exact opposite, and it is the only division shortcut on this page. Halve 28 and you get 14. Halve 14 and you get 7, which is what 28 ÷ 4 was asking for. It works on every multiple here: 36 gives 18, then 9. 48 gives 24, then 12. A child who can halve can divide by 4 the day they can multiply by it, and the missing-number sheets in the third group are built on exactly that.

The rule that says when four divides

Cover everything except the last two digits. If four goes into those two, it goes into the whole number. 316 ends in 16, and four goes into 16, so four goes into 316. 318 ends in 18, and four does not go into 18, so it does not. 1524 ends in 24, so it does. The rule holds at any length, because a hundred is itself 4 x 25 and so is every thousand made of hundreds. It is also how you tell a leap year: look at the last two digits, which works for every year from 1901 to 2099.

The 4s are the 2s doubled and the 8s halved

This table sits exactly between two easy ones. Double the 2 times table and you get these answers: 2 x 7 = 14 becomes 4 x 7 = 28. Double them again and you get the 8s: 4 x 7 = 28 becomes 8 x 7 = 56. That is why the 8s are a fair page to print next, and why halving is the way back. It also explains the most common wrong answer on a mixed sheet, which is not a random number at all but exactly twice or exactly half the right one.

Elsewhere the overlaps are small and worth naming. This table meets the 3s at 12, 24 and 36, meets the 6s at those three and 48 as well, and touches the 7s once, at 28. It meets the 9s at 36 and nowhere else.

Four legs, four wheels, four sides

Four is a number a child can see without being taught it. A chair has 4 legs, a dog has 4 legs, a square has 4 sides, and a year has 4 seasons. Three chairs is 12 legs, seven is 28 and twelve is 48. The word problems on this page count groups that exist rather than groups invented to fill a sum.

Two more are worth having in the head. Four quarters make one whole, which is the door this table opens into fractions, and 4 x 25 = 100, which turns a quarter of anything into a number a child can say out loud.

The multiples of 4 are every second even number

Count the even numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. Every second one of them is on this chart. That is the same fact as doubling twice, said from the other side, and it is why counting on in 4s is faster than it looks: from 20 you do not step to 22, you step over it to 24.

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 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 4 x ? = 36 is a division nobody has named yet, and where halving twice does the work. Then the mixed pages, because a sheet of pure 4s lets a child stop reading the first number and answer on autopilot.

Timed grids last. Doubling twice is honest arithmetic and it costs about two seconds, which is two 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 4 x 9 to see whether 36 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 4 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 fours

Double every answer here and you have the 8 times table, which is this same doubling run taken one step further. The 3 times table is the neighbour on the other side, and the two of them meet at 12, 24 and 36. The 6 times table shares those three and 48 too, the 7 times table touches this one only at 28, and the 9 times table only at 36. 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.