The “How many…?” song I wrote to practice “How many?” (surprise, surprise!). But until now there hasn’t been a simple song for teaching just the numbers on their own. In Japan the “Seven Steps” song is quite popular, but not so much elsewhere.

So I’ve just put up a new demo song that takes the numbers part of the How many..? song but starts of really, really slow, then repeats, gradually getting faster and faster until it reaches the speed of the How many…? song.

You either hold up your fingers (like in the How old are you? song) or jump on each number. Then to make the repeats more fun, there’s a story as each time you forget to add in the number 12. (I’m sure some kids will believe you are really forgetting!)

Hopefully the speed is slow enough for most classes, but I’d love to hear your thoughts! The mp3 and discussion is here on the forum. I’m hoping it can be used by inexperienced teachers as their first numbers song so your input is very much appreciated.

The best thing about it is that once you’ve done this song once, if you try it again what once seemed really fast now seems very, very slow, which is a great confidence builder!