The Tappy Math(s) project marks a landmark development in early years maths education: using intentionally designed brand-new songs to support enjoyment and understanding of mathematics in the early years. An international, multi-disciplinary team has come together to produce research-informed songs that bring foundational mathematical concepts to life for children aged 3–6. This pioneering approach, drawing on co-design and knowledge brokering, offers educators, families, and early childhood settings a fresh, evidence-based way to encourage mathematical thinking through music. The initial release introduces four original songs exploring pattern, rectangles, zero, and tempo, each underpinned transparently by research and supported by a rich suite of resources: animation and gesture videos, backing and vocal audio tracks, printable sheet music and lyric sheets, and a PDF of song notes and suggested activities. The collection is freely available at tappymathematics.com .
In this talk, Principal Investigator Dr Lucy Rycroft-Smith explores the process of writing and testing the songs, and what teachers, children, parents and researchers said about them. You can find out about the general process of transforming research into song and animation, some of the trickiest questions to resolve as part of co-design, and some of the more interesting design decisions we made, for example:
- How many words for zero did we choose to represent and why did we choose a do-re-mi structure for the song?
- Why did we make the animated rectangles ‘elastic’?
- How and why did we represent three different tempos with a band of instrument-playing cats?
- What have aliens on their way to school got to do with the topic of repeating patterns?