Music for a 4 year old

[WillowFae]

My DD is 4 and she loves dancing to music. I caught her dancing in her room the other day to a song she has on a pretend iPod that came with a Happy Meal from McDonald's. Unfortunately it only has one song and we are sick of it now (and considering giving it to my Mum to keep at their house so that she can get fed up with it because she was the one that took them to McDonald's!)

I do have concerns about lyrics and performances from a lot of chart music etc. So I was wondering what sort of music/artists would be suitable for her at that age (other than High School Musical). What do/did your children listen to?

[bilblio]

My DD (just 4) loves the They Might be Giants kids albums.... and more importantly so do we. "Here Come the ABC's", "Here Come the 123's" and "Here Comes Science" are the best ones. They come with DVD's so she likes watching them too... a lot of them are on YouTube to give you an idea of what they're like. They're very listenable, and educational... and it's very funny hearing her sing "We are The Mesopotamians", she manages it even though her speech isn't great.

She loves musicals too, but not High School Musical. I got fed up with watching Peppa Pig last summer so bought a box set of musicals. We get serenaded by Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Meet me in St Louis, Whipcrack Away, Doh a Deer, and random other songs that your average 4 year old wouldn't know.

DH is a musician and we both hate chart music so she never hears it. It's more likely to be folk, or indie music she hears.

[RockyRaccoon]

DD likes old stuff like Abba, the Beatles, the Monkees, The Beach Boys.

She also likes "A couple of kooks" by David bowie and "love cats" by the Cure.

[gallicgirl]

There's a cd by Trudy Kerr called Jazz for Juniors. It has lots of lovely singalong bits.

www.amazon.co.uk/Sings-Jazz-Juniors-Along-Songs/dp/B000JLPNZM/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1312414226&sr=8-11&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

She is a proper jazz artist so it's not at all annoying (unless you hate jazz)!

[gallicgirl]

Sorry, forgot to hit the convert links button.



www.amazon.co.uk/Sings-Jazz-Juniors-Along-Songs/dp/B000JLPNZM/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1312414226&sr=8-11&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

[CaptainNancy]

Rocky- kooks is my 5yo's favourite song!

We have a st etienne album for children, charlie and lola, queen, killers, they listen to a lot of classical too.

[TheOriginalBanshee]

DS (4) LOVES an old belly dancing music CD It's his absolute favourite to listen to (he won't dance to it). The music is pretty rhythmic and the drums are fab.

[MrsShrekTheThird]

we use a lot of Abba, (the whole mama mia soundtrack) stuff from "Wicked", over the rainbow (Danielle's version) and some suitable chart stuff, like bits of JLS "she makes me wanna" - I've combed the words and nothing rude, I promise. My dc also like a bit of Tchaikovsky and have got a 'thing' about the Nutcracker atm. I'm a dance teacher btw and have my own dance mad 5yo

[WillowFae]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone :) I will get out my Mamma Mia CD for her. She also loves Annie but it drives DH up the wall!

Hadn't thought of things like Wicked but will try her with that. She also likes the Nutcracker music as we watched some of the ballet on TV recently :)

We are going to try to dig out my very old iPod and get a cheap pair of speakers so that she can listen to more stuff (cheaper than buying her a CD player and we don't have one ourselves anymore as we only listen to iPods).

[WillowFae]

gallicgirl - thanks for that link. I like that one :)

[bilblio]

We listen to the ipod in the car all the time, hooked up to the stereo though. I wouldn't give a young child headphones, but I'm slightly deaf so very over-cautious about hearing.... but that's a separate issue... We did have a playlist with her music, and several for our music. Last year we drove to Cornwall for our holiday... from Manchester. DD wanted Her music on all the time, and often it was easier to give in to stop the whining!

When we got back we compiled a joint playlist of mostly her music, the stuff we like anyway, ie Muppets and They Might be Giants, with a few of our choices in that she should like, or we wanted her to get to know. She complains sometimes when our choices come on, but we tell her one of ours, then hers again. She's got to know, and like our music a bit more, so as the year has gone on we've kept adding a few more of our choices.

[WillowFae]

Thanks bilblio. No, we won't give her headphones - hence buying speakers for the ipod.

Having said that she DOES have a pair of headphones that have a volume limiter on that we use for our annual drive down to the south of France so that her and my son can watch different DVDs. We used those for the first time this year.

But no, for listening to music, just speakers