Tag Archives: rhymes

Great Resources for Songs for Kids

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Each week in my class, we have a circle time where we sing lots of great songs that toddlers love. Here is my lesson plan for a full year’s worth of Circle Time for Toddlers.

Circle time is a lot of fun for the children in the room and for the parents, but beyond that, singing songs with your children helps your child to learn in many ways, and enhances your connections as a family. Singing builds:

  • Musical skills
  • Mathematical and spatial skills
  • Vocabulary
  • Memory
  • Connections to traditions
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Attachment

Learn more about music and development.

Here are a few of my favorite resources for kids’ songs:

King County Library has videos of librarians singing LOTS (hundreds!) of classic children’s rhymes: http://kcls.org/content/. If you’re trying to remember any childhood song, this is a great place to look! They include versions in multiple world languages (e.g. Russian, Urdu, Spanish, Vietnamese…)

Jbrary is a YouTube channel featuring two children’s librarians singing songs and finger rhymes from library story times: www.youtube.com/user/Jbrary/videos.

Nancy Stewart has lyrics and audio recordings (.mp3) of lots of traditional songs, including “songs every child should know” and campfire songs: http://singwithourkids.com/song-library.htm. She also recommends books which include songs, or have rhythmic text that can be sung, to reinforce music and early literacy skills: http://singwithourkids.com/bookshelf.htm.

Nancy Kopman has lots of great songs for toddler classes and preschools.  https://nancykopman.com/learning-centre/#parents

Let’s Play Music was developed by Sara Mullett. It includes over 150 songs – each has lyrics, sheet music, a video of the tune being played on a xylophone, and activities / motions to go along with the song. http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com

Math Songs: https://familymath.stanford.edu/activities/singing-together/

Music Connections offers some great posts on teaching rhythm and a steady beat to kids age birth to five: A Parent’s Guide to Beats and Rhythms, Developmental Progression of Steady Beat, and “Catching” a Steady Beat with Very Young Children.  This includes tips like: help your child experience steady beats by singing with them, dancing with them, or tapping on their knees in rhythm. When they’re doing repetitive movements, like tapping on something, sing or dance along in a steady rhythm that’s similar t o their rhythm. Have them walk or march to a beat.

Bounces, Lifts, Tickles and Rhymes for Baby. A nice collection from Storytime Shenanigans.

YouTube has a huge collection of animated videos featuring traditional and new children’s songs, in a wide range of languages. For example, if you look for alphabet songs, not only would you find countless versions of the traditional alphabet song, you’d find many variations in melody (like ABC Rap), plus many elaborate alphabet songs (Animal Alphabet, Alexander Alligator, etc.), you can even find several different songs each dedicated to a single letter of the alphabet. (Even Q has 8 or more songs!)

I prefer the other resources to YouTube personally, because many of the things on YouTube are so over-produced – too much visual stimulation, overly ornamented music, and sometimes just a frenetic cheerfulness (a la Barney) that can wear on me.

As with everything on YouTube, the quality ranges tremendously, and there are some that are frankly inappropriate for children; however, it’s worth searching through and finding some of the great ones and setting up your own playlist. I will includes links to some good ones on my “favorite songs” page. Most kids love watching the videos along with the song, but if you’d rather not expose your child to videos, you can easily find a free program online which will allow you to convert videos into .mp3 audio files. (I use YTD Video downloader)

More Music Resources

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