8 Times Table Worksheets

How do you learn the 8 times table?

Double three times. Eight is two doubled and doubled again, so 8 x 6 means 6 doubled to 12, doubled to 24, doubled to 48. Chant the table until it runs clean, then answer it out of order, then mixed with the other tables, then against a clock. Doubling is the way in and recall is the destination.

Double, double, double

The 8 times table is the 2 times table taken three times over. 8 x 7 is 7 doubled to 14, doubled to 28, doubled to 56. It is slower than remembering and it always works, so a child who blanks halfway through a test still has a way back to the answer. Plenty of adults who say they know their 8s are quietly doubling.

The last digit runs 8, 6, 4, 2, 0

Read the answers down the chart and watch nothing but the last digit: 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, then 48, 56, 64, 72, 80. It runs 8, 6, 4, 2, 0 and starts over. Every product in this table is even, and the tens digit climbs by one at every second step. An answer ending in an odd number is wrong before anybody checks it, and that is a test a child can run alone.

An octopus has eight arms

8 is not an abstract number to a child. An octopus has 8 arms, a spider has 8 legs, and a chessboard is 8 squares along each side, which is why 8 x 8 = 64 is the one fact in the middle of the table with a picture behind it. Two octopuses is 16 arms and five is 40. The word problems on this page use groups that can be pictured rather than groups that only exist inside a sum.

Print them in this order

Print the chart first and the in-order sheet after it, then stop for the day. The chart is what a child looks at and the ladder is what they fill in, and between them they cover the whole table without asking for anything that has not just been read.

Day two is for a mixed-up sheet. The distance between how fast the in-order page came back and how long the shuffled one takes is the honest measure of what has stuck, and it is usually a shock. Stay on the shuffled sheets until they are quick.

The missing-number sheets come next, where the question is 8 x ? = 72. That is division in a disguise, and it is worth meeting before anybody gives it that name. The mixed-tables sheets follow, because a page of nothing but 8s flatters a child: they stop reading the first number and answer on autopilot.

Leave the timed tests until last. Speed is what practice produces, not what produces practice, and handing a stopwatch to a child who is still doubling on their fingers only tells them they are slow.

The three that give trouble

Almost every child sticks on the same three: 8 x 6, 8 x 7 and 8 x 8. They sit in the middle of the table with no landmark near them, and their answers, 48, 56 and 64, are close enough to be swapped for one another.

Work in from the ends instead. 8 x 5 is half of 8 x 10, so it is half of 80. From 40, one more 8 gives 48. From 80, one 8 back gives 72 and one 8 on gives 88. The square, 8 x 8 = 64, is worth learning as a fact of its own, because it is the one reached for most often and the one most often missed by exactly 8.

Every answer key is on page two

Anything here that asks a question prints as two pages: the worksheet, then the identical layout with the answers set in green. Marking it takes no arithmetic at all, and a child can check their own page, which teaches more than being told the score does.

The three reference sheets, the chart, the desk strips and the tracing page, carry no key, because their answers are printed on them already. The flashcards spend page two on the card backs, mirrored column by column, so that a double sided print lands every answer behind the fact it belongs to.

All 80 sheets in six groups

The sheets come in six groups, meant to be worked roughly in that order: the table in order, the table shuffled, the table read backwards as missing numbers and divisions, the table mixed in with the others, the pictures for anyone who needs to see where the numbers come from, and the timed tests at the end.

Every file prints the same on US Letter and on A4, in black and white, with no sign-up and no watermark. Print one, print all 80, use them with one child or with a whole class.

More multiplication practice

The table before this one is the 7 times table, and the tables the 8s get confused with are all in multiplication worksheets. The whole grid on one page is the multiplication chart, and there is a 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 the same facts this page drills.