Multiplication Gets Visual!

Teaching multiplication can be a tricky endeavor. It really is one of those first arithmetic topics that move very quickly past finger (or toe) counting, so unless your little mini muffins have a truly solid conceptual understanding of what’s going on, much of the dinner-time discussion of this operation quickly deteriorates into what I’m sure to little ears sounds like a stream of random and arbitrarily large numbers. Building arrays out of manipulatives is one way to help make multiplication concepts a little more accessible. So while I’m a huge proponent of memorizing those math facts, sometimes there’s nothing better than a visual aide to tie the idea down and give all that math fact practice a foundation somewhere. That’s where these new visual multiplication worksheets come in. They’re designed to be the very first worksheets your third or fourth grade student encounters when you’re introducing multiplication, and they're a great followup to those dinner discussions with rows of peas or Brussel sprouts, which may or may not get your kids begging to do math worksheets... You never know. Anyway, by showing an array of small wooden blocks and asking students to think about rows and columns, they provide a bridge between strategies like skip counting and multiplication. Visual Multiplication Worksheets Each of the arrays is a distinct photo of some small wood blocks, so building these was a bit of an art project. I hope you enjoy them, because Dad won’t be making too many other similar worksheets like this any time soon! Regardless, I hope you’ll give them a try if you’re just starting on your multiplication facts. When you’re ready for more, be sure to check out the multiplication charts, multiplication tables, and of course all the multiplication fact worksheets as well!