Musical present (CD player, microphone, floor piano) for almost 3yo - which one?

[cravingcake]

I am trying to find DD a musical sort of present for Christmas. She will be 3 in January, and we also have a 5yo DS so she has had a lot of hand me downs but we don't have anything musical.

I've been looking at microphones, CD players (real and pretend), floor keyboards and just cant decide which would be best without driving us mad with the noise Please let me know your recommendations, I'm happy to spend up to about £50 as this will be her main Christmas present.

She does like to sing along to songs on the radio as well as nursery rhymes.

How about a xylophone? I used to love mine

My dd is 3 a few days after Christmas and her grandparents are getting her the ELC boom board standing keyboard. It has drums, a microphone and you can plug in an MP3 and singalong. I also had some indecision but this seemed to do the lot. Seemed to have good reviews.

They also had a CD player with two microphones, which I still might get as she also has a 5 year old brother who might fight her for the mike!

Someone here said the CD player ate a lot of expensive batteries though, which put me off.

Don't get a floor piano....just don't!

Oooo Alternatively ... I have a used one you can buy....they are really good fun and not at all irritating, kids don't just walk up and down on it for hours on end playing it louder and louder and louder they play beautiful tuneful music on it really quietly ...

We have all of these in our house (5 and nearly 3 year old).
CD player great for the 5 year old, but too delicate/fiddly for the younger one to operate by herself.
Floor piano is great fun and both girls love jumping around on it. But it's large so has to be folded away when not in use. So it gets forgotten about. Maybe used every couple of weeks.

Nearly 3 year old has a keyboard with build in stool and microphone. Cost about £20 from toys r us (but I think this was on offer - usually about £40).

Overall I think the keyboard/microphone is the best item. Most versatile and played with a lot. 5 yr old tries to play little tunes on it. 2 yr old dances to the demo tracks and bashes the keys...

Brilliant, thanks for the advice. Definitely WONT be getting a floor keyboard as my 2 are the type to have races along it

Will have a look at keyboards again, think that will work well.

Dd is also nearly 3 and also loves music. It was probably me who said about the elc cd player eating batteries - and it does! We've got one if you want it satsuki

I looked at loads of keyboard/microphone toys and the reviews just didn't seem great with most breaking or not sounding great... also, we have a keyboard already (charity shop.buy) which they do love.

So we went with microphone - one from amazon that can record and plays demo songs etc. Hopefully she'll love it. She also likes ds's ukulele if you want to get a real instrument?!

Just a thought....if you have space have you considered a real piano? When you think about it you can spend up to £40 on a breakable toy piano and we just bought a proper, beautifully tuned upright piano on eBay for £60 for our children's xmas present.

DD had a CD player with the two microphones around that age, an elc one I think. She loved it, I certainly got bored of the CD of cbeebies theme tunes before she did.

It did go through batteries quite quickly, but it's easy to pick up a power supply for it. The details of the type needed were in the instructions.

It was you misty9

Aha, power supply sounds good. Maybe we'll keep it

That was our other thought too that we'll get a real piano in the new year