Do you want to give your students more practice in making mental calculations? This files contains 54 grids that practice basic addition, subtraction and multiplication facts. The grids are differentiated, ranging from facts using only the numbers 0-3, to ones which use numbers up to 18. They are very easy to use - simply print the grid that suits a particular student's needs and give it to him or her. An answer key for each grid is included.

Practicing basic facts using these grids helps students:

1. to see patterns more easily. For example as students fill in the additional row or column with the number 0 the see that any number plus 0 is itself. As they fill in the row and column for 9, they see that in most cases they must have a 1, which represents 10, and for their second digit, one less than the number they are adding to 9.

2. practice more than with a typical worksheet. The basic grid using numbers 0-3 will provide 16 calculations, while the full grid, in addition 0-9, will provide 100 practice calculations.

3. to learn about tables, columns, rows and the idea of a matrix.

Students can also be encouraged to time themselves and see if they can improve how quickly they do their calculations. They should only be comparing their times to their own previous times, not those of their classmates.