Best Baby and Toddler Music (subjective list)

[lums123]

Hi,
I promised to put this list together a long time ago, so long in fact I can't find the original post in which I offered to put it together. I wish I could, because I'd send it to the soon-to-be-due woman who wanted to build up a kids' music library for their new baby...

Anyway, I've posted a very subjective list of great recordings for babies and toddlers on:
http://home.comcast.net/~babyfriends/Babyfavoritemusic.html

Just so you know, we are heavily biased towards folk/acoustic/traditional/roots music in our household. However, we listed only those selections that our baby liked best, even if sometimes we didn't. For every title on that list, we sifted through 20 from the library that weren't worth the shelf space! I never knew there was so much truly bad children's music out there! IMHO, this list has the gems.

Please let me know if the link has any problems.

Happy listening and singing!!!

P.S. If this list looks like your list of favorites, and you have one I missed, please post it!!

[egoldber]

Sarah's absolute favorite right now (and it is in keeping with many of the CDs you have) is "Songs for Wiggleworms" by the Old Town School of Folk Music. She LOVES this CD!

I also didn't notice any Dan Zanes albums on your list. Our favorite album of his is Family Dance, but the others are good too.

Where did you find the JayJay CD? Sarah adores JayJay and a CD would be good!

[susabusa]

I highly recommend the Songs for Wiggleworms as well. It is a favorite at our house. Now that my older two are 5 are 3 1/2 we really like Trout Fishing in America, and Jim Cosgrove (Bop, Bop Dinosaur)I recently came across Elizabeth Mitchell and LOVE!!!! her kids albums. www.youaremyflower.org

If you're really bored you can browse around on CDbaby.com for hours finding great music.

Steph

[lums123]

Thanks for the new music!!! — no, I haven't heard any of these, with the exception of Trout Fishing in America, which we loved even before our son was born. We'll have to get those recordings out now that he's a little older...I'll have to add those to the list. Trout Fishing in America is great in concert for kids, too.

I'm going to try all the ones you recommend. I tried the clips on Elizabeth Mitchell's site — they're great! Thanks for the CDbaby.com referral, it's also great — I love the way they have the various genres broken down into sub-genres. I'm listening and tapping my toes to Dan Zanes from the site as I'm typing this (MacOSX is so cool, BTW, finally at least my computer can multi-task!).

We got our Jay Jay stuff from Overstock.com. It was cheaper than amazon.com, and faster. With Overstock, there's no returns on audio/visual media, so it's a bit of a gamble. Their descriptions aren't always good enough to know what you're getting — for example when we got the If You Give a Pig A Pancake miniature book and tape instead of the book we thought we were getting. (It turned out to be a lucky purchase, our son loved the tape.) But the prices are so good, I usually check Overstock first for kids books and DVD's especially. Most recently we got Thomas the Tank Engine and Caillou DVDs at great discounts.

Oh, one more bit of music I forgot to mention — The Sound of Music! I don't know if this is a good thing for me to admit, but it was the first (and only) full-length movie our son has ever watched all the way through, and there's really nothing in it that very little children can't see. (Except maybe at the end, but for our toddler, the movie was essentially over by the festival scene, since the situation with the father had resolved and the best music was done anyway.) We got the Sound of Music DVD on Overstock, too. Some of these DVD's are great because they include all the other languages — we've also fast-forwarded through to hear all the songs in French, too. I've just reserved the CD at the library, but I'm assuming it will be as popular around here as the movie.

Thanks again for the great new music! If you think of anything else, please write back. We still come home with loads of CDs from the library and try them all out, but the pickings are getting even slimmer now that we've heard so many of them. Getting a good referral sure beats that. Do you know of any good storytelling/music CD's? I'd love to find more like Fiddletales. We've tried some Rabbit Ears Radio recordings from the library, but so far the subjects have been too mature, and the recording quality too poor (frustrates our budding talker).

[mharling]

We LOVE the CD that came with the Enfamil diaper bag. Glad to see it was on your list! Now I have to look into some others..... Thanks!

Mary & Lane 4/6/03
http://www.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=67b0de21b3237413c427 - New 6/18

[AngelaS]

One of our favorites is Handels Water Music and Music for Royal Fireworks.

My 5yo also loves anything Veggie Tales and the newest cd from Manneheim Steamroller---it has traditional patriotic songs done the MS way with a couple of hokey truckin' songs. LOL