Using Times Alive! for Learning Multiplication Facts

One of the things I used during our lovely Living Math Lessons was a program called Times Alive! I found it rather by mistake while doing my daily blog hopping. Before I knew it I’d stumbled upon the City Creek Press website and was in total awe of their multiplication program.

I confess, that despite my child being officially in third grade at the time and having an amazing grasp on a variety of math subjects from simple to complex I hadn’t branched out with multiplication yet. No, rather I’d been teaching him “groups of” with a fun game we’d been playing. After a quick chat with my husband about what funds were left in our homeschool budget I purchased Times Alive! and never looked back.

Using Times Alive! for Learning Multiplication Facts

We chose the download instead of the cd version of this program {remember we live overseas so downloads often win out for us!}. Each day I’d load up the program. My son would happily listen to the story and song and then do a quick and simple application test proving he understood and fully grasped what he’d learned. {As of the update of this post in 2025 there is an online membership option and they also have a Times Alive App.}

Inside Times Alive!

• The programme starts with 2’s and skips 1’s and 0’s. Not a huge deal for us because I’d all ready taught him his 0’s, 1’s, 2’s, 10’s, 11’s, and we were working on our 5’s.
• There aren’t stories for the 2 family. Rather there’s a teddy bear who comes on and shows that by counting by 2’s you can easily find the answer to any problem you need. Simple.
• There are stories for all your 3 facts, 4 facts, 6 facts, and 8 facts. For the 9 facts there are clues on how to get the answer quickly. These clues are as great as the stories. I can always hear my kids working out 9 facts if they’d forgotten the answer! Again, none for the 5’s, 10’s, or 11’s. Wasn’t an issue for us, and I really believe that it shouldn’t be an issue for anyone.

We loved some of the stories and were constantly amazed at the ability of the author to come up with some great little rhymes that permitted the children to remember exactly what the stories were. If my son now says, “Mom, I forgot what 8×8 is..” I’ll shout out, “STICKS are FOR the fire!”

The story for this particular math problem is that two snowman {shaped like 8’s} go walking on a cold winter night. They get really cold when they stumble upon a sign that tells them they can have the sticks for the fire. Super simple.

Times Alive! Downloadable Activity Sheets

After my son learned all the fact families I discovered City Creek Press also sells a learning pack called, Times Downloadable Activity Sheets to compliment the online Times Alive! program.

Included are flash cards with picture clues, posters to color in and a few other simple goodies. It was offered inexpensively as a download. We all worked together coloring in the posters for my son’s math notebook. I laminated all the flash cards and we go through them {little brother too} each morning before we get going with any of our other school stuff.

What I love:

• My son asked to do this program! If a day passed and he didn’t get a turn with it he’d complain! Yep, and if his little brother was set up with another task at the time and missed out on the video or song there were tears and I’d have to replay it!
• The stories were, for the most part, catchy.
• For my visual learner, the color programme and the add-ons {mentioned below} allowed him to add more color and hands on learning.
• I could play it on my Mac!

• There are posters and flashcards with the picture clues on them that can be downloaded from the website!  This allows us to practice what we learned in an easy to remember way! Not only that, there were some heated discussions over who was going to color which posters. I’m only slightly ashamed to admit I was part of those chats with my boys.

What I don’t like:

• I confess there were a couple of stories that left me scratching my head. My son disagrees with me on this and since the program was for him that’s what matters most, right?

My kids love this program and have learned their multiplication facts with ease. I feel eternally grateful to the people over at City Creek Press for that!

More Homeschool Math Help

The Very Best Options for Homeschool Math including full curriculum options, supplemental resources, and tips/advice for teaching math in your homeschool.

~ Originally published January 2012, written by Kendra