Music and Maths: A Winning Combination

I used to teach multiplication tables by getting people to sing them out loud. The five times table fitted very nicely to Greensleeves I seem to remember so I was intrigued to see that Sing Up has some maths themed songs. Sing Up is a not-for-profit organisation which helps teachers weave music into all areas of the primary curriculum.

A good place to start is obviously with counting songs such as 10 Green Bottles and Five Fine Bumble Bees and the site has most of the old favourites such as This Old Man and Going over the Sea.

Mister Double Trouble encourages  children to double up numbers up to double six. The basis of the lyrics is a clumsy man who has several household disasters which can be used for many problem-solving activities using doubles. Alien Shuffle is lively and good fun and I likeAlicethe Camel that brings in some basic numbers and is sung to the tune of Dem bones dem bones. Multiplicity is a typical musical show song with lots of clapping that helps children work out multiples but what about numbers in French? A douze takes care of that – at least up to 12.

There’s no doubt that singing introduces an element of fun into maths learning especially for number bonds and tables where progress is often slow so why not have a look at Sing Up and see how it could help you?

St Saviour’s C of E Primary School, westLondonused he songs to plan a special event. They invited dads to join the children for an afternoon of maths-themed songs, an idea which would be easy for other schools to adopt. Not only would it fire up maths lessons I am sure it would also improve dads’ bathtime singing too.

Sing Up is a popular online subscription service. //www.singup.org/