Recently, I have been reading Visual Supports for People with Autism: A Guide for Parents and Professionals (Topics in Autism) and knew that I would need help teaching Lira how to multiply. I needed a way for her to visualize the multiplication problems, not just so she would get the correct product but so that she could understand what the purpose was. I began searching for worksheets with visual supports but all I could find were basic facts sheets for drills. Maybe I looked in the wrong places or maybe I needed to create them myself.
I built the worksheets so that a child could see the correspondence between the factors in the equation. For instance, one popsicle has two sticks. Therefore, one times two equals two. Or, each mushroom has eight spots so if you have two mushrooms, two times eight is sixteen. I also encourage skip counting so a child can make the connections between patterns and multiplication.
Finally, the child can refer to the visual cues to complete the multiplication problems.
Lira loved it. She danced because she understood what multiplying was and how to do it. (Please note that Lira is only in the second grade and I aimed these printables at that age group. However, I believe they can be used for all ages, especially for those who are struggling to make the connections necessary to understand how multiplying works.)
I wanted to also make multiplication flash cards for remembering the facts but included the visual prompts from the worksheets as a reminder. The product is left blank so that these can be used easily for review.
For our family’s use of the cards, I laminated them and then punched a hole to keep the cards together with a binder ring.
If you wanted your child to do these as a self-guided activity, I recommend writing the answers on the back.
Free Multiplication Worksheets ~
- Multiplication Worksheets (all in a zipped file)
- Multiplying by 1 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 2 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 3 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 4 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 5 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 6 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 7 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 8 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 9 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 10 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 11 Worksheet
- Multiplying by 12 Worksheet
- Multiplication Facts (all in a zipped file)
- Multiplication Facts 1x 2x & All Covers
- Multiplication Facts 3x 4x 5x
- Multiplication Facts 6x 7x 8x
- Multiplication Facts 9x 10x
- Multiplication Facts ~ extensions to include 11x 12x
- Multiplication Facts 11x 12x