I’ve been wanting to write about all the cool math songs out there for quite some time. I’ve been somewhat collecting them in hopes that I’ll have the world’s biggest collection of math songs.
Alas, I’m fairly confident that I’ve only managed to round up about 10%. They range in educational value, music quality and catchiness. Songs that I love, Daughter isn’t quite interested in. The one she loves I sometimes find slightly boring (especially after 3,000 times of replay).
Not all math songs are good.
Math and music are very similar in that everybody has their preference. I’m not a fan of calculus. And I’m not a fan of rap music. (Not that calculus is the mathematical equivalent of rap music, but for me it’s just as annoying.)
If you’re searching for math songs, make sure you give them a listen before you buy. There’s a lot of garbage out there (sometimes that’s an opinion and sometimes that’s a technical fact).
There’s also some NSFW stuff too – which can be fun for grownups, but you don’t want to inadvertently play something nasty for your parrot two year old (I’m speaking from experience here, #jussaying).
Here’s my collection of songs and albums.
- Do The Math by Ralph’s World is a song about friends… who happen to be shapes: Sanderson the Square, Tony the Triangle, Poly the polyhedron (non-Euclidean) mass. So fun!
- Schoolhouse Rock: Multiplication Rock – the best ever. I’ve been singing this to Daughter since she was born! “Three is a Magic Number” still makes me tear up.
- The Waterford Institute is producing some good stuff. Daughter loves this video of Marmot’s Map Shapes and this album with math songs looks good: Rusty & Rosy Present: Beginning Math Songs, Vol. 1. I haven’t bought it yet, but I will!
- The Math Song by Scott Perry – I just downloaded this off iTunes and I’m excited about listening to it – over and over!
- Another I grabbed this morning is I, Pythagoras (The Math Song)
by Nikki Shultz. This is more of a grown up song, but she’s got an amazing voice.
You can even make your own!
Like I did (and had Husband sing it) with The 1-2-3 Song.
Or have your students do it! This song was recorded about ten years ago for me by Sidney & Dale, two Art Institute students in my Fundamentals of Math class:
So how about it – what math song is your favorite? And what math song would you like to hear, sing or write? Share it in the comments (and include a link to the audio or YouTube video).
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My favorite, by far, is the Platonic Solids song by Peter Weatherall:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C36h00d7xGs
By way of this song, I found my way to Peter’s website
http://www.kidsinglish.com/newspeak/science-and-math-dvds-multibuy.htm
where he sells DVDs *FULL* of wonderful (and ingeniously instructive) songs about Math and Science!! Oh my! My daughter (almost 5) and I are in love with this quirky/genius man. And Daddy is a tough benchmark to stack up to. Even Daddy finds himself humming the songs long after they have played. We all do!
Thanks, T.!
I bought it – in DVD form. I had originally ordered just the music CDs, but Peter contacted me and let me know that the DVDs can be used for music only as well.
Thanks so much for sharing!
I maintain a database of science and math songs that may also be of interest — go to singaboutscience.org and click on “Find Songs.” My math favorites include those by Harry Guffee and by Matheatre (Sadie Bowman and Marc Gutman).
Very cool, Greg! Thanks so much. I’ve added this to the resources page on this site.
For readers’ convenience here it is, as well:
http://www.singaboutscience.org/MASSIVE/search_all_2e.php?skeywords_in=math&sperformer_writer_in=&stitle_in=&sparody_in=&salbum_in=&sURL_in=&age_restriction=true&min_age=0&max_age=99