Get smart curated videos delivered to your inbox.   SUBSCRIBE
The Kid Should See This

Figure Eight – Schoolhouse Rock

Watch more with these video collections:

Daydream about the Figure Eight with jazz vocalist Blossom Dearie and some help from renowned Schoolhouse Rock composer Bob Dorough, in this 1973 Multiplication Rock animated short.

The educational series put the multiplication tables to music, along with quirky, number-filled scenes, infused short and catchy math lessons into the era’s kid-focused Saturday morning television programming.

figure eight ice skating

“Figure eight as double four.
Figure four as half of eight.
If you skate, you would be great,
If you could make a figure 8.
That’s a circle that turns ’round upon itself.”

As the song builds, the animation visualizes multiplication by eights in fun ways, including an octopus, periscopes with peeking eyes, jumping fish, balloons, a polar bear, and a blimp. Then “place it on its side and it’s a symbol meaning infinity.”

2 x 8 is 16
six times eight is 48
Watch these Schoolhouse Rock videos next:
The Four-Legged Zoo: Multiplication by 4
Counting by Fives
Verb: That’s What’s Happening (1974)
Telegraph Line (Nervous System), a 1979 Schoolhouse Rock animation

Bonus: Place Value Song: Ones, Tens, and Hundreds.

This Webby award-winning video collection exists to help teachers, librarians, and families spark kid wonder and curiosity. TKSST features smarter, more meaningful content than what's usually served up by YouTube's algorithms, and amplifies the creators who make that content.

Curated, kid-friendly, independently-published. Support this mission by becoming a sustaining member today.

🌈 Watch these videos next...

Verb: That’s What’s Happening (1974) – Schoolhouse Rock!

Rion Nakaya

Types of Triangles, a Flocabulary math music video

Rion Nakaya

Them Not-So-Dry Bones – Schoolhouse Rock

Rion Nakaya

The Four-Legged Zoo: Multiplication by 4

Rion Nakaya

Telegraph Line (Nervous System), a 1979 Schoolhouse Rock animation

Rion Nakaya

Schoolhouse Rock: Unpack Your Adjectives

Rion Nakaya

Rythmetic (1956), a numbers film by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart

Rion Nakaya

Right On Tracks: Music videos that encourage kindness, inclusion, and empathy

Rion Nakaya

Place Value Song: Ones, Tens, and Hundreds

Rion Nakaya