Do you have a favorite song? And have you ever wondered how many songs are out there? No one knows exactly, but some people guess about 80 million. To get a sense of that, 80 million minutes is about 152 years…so if most songs are from the year 1870 or so, that would mean 1 new song written every minute. Now try to learn the words to all of them!
Wee ones: Can you sing “la la la”? Sing the word “la” 6 times!
Little kids: If you have 2 favorite songs, and one runs 3 minutes long and the other is 2 minutes longer, how long is the 2nd song? Bonus: If you sing both songs one after the other, how long does that take?
Big kids: Humans started counting about 9,000 years ago, but started using an alphabet 4,000 years later. How many years ago did the alphabet start? Bonus: If you add together those 2 chunks of time (9,000 and 5,000), then subtract 2,000, then cut in half, you get the number of years ago that Egyptians had harps and flutes to play songs. How many years ago was that?
The sky’s the limit: If we have 81,000,000 songs by today, and humans wrote all but 1,000,000 of them in the last 100 years, how many songs have been written each year in the last 100 years if it’s equal every year?
Answers:
Wee ones: La la la, la la la!
Little kids: 5 minutes long. Bonus: 8 minutes.
Big kids: 5,000 years ago. Bonus: 6,000 years ago.
The sky’s the limit: 800,000 songs each year, since 80,000,000 songs were written in 100 years.
