Singing lullabies to babies or playing singing games with toddlers is a traditional part of caring for children the world over. But remembering the words and melodies of even the commonest children's songs can sometimes tax our memories.
This is where books and CDs of traditional rhymes and playsongs for the very young can be so helpful, both reminding us of old favourites or offering suggestions for new songs to sing and play.
Lively Time Playsongs
Sheena Roberts and Rachel Fuller
A & C Black in association with Playsongs Publications, 9.99, ISBN: 0 7136 6940 3
This book is a sequel to the very useful and successful book Playsongs and is in a similar format. It follows a baby's active day in songs and pictures, from 'Upsie daisy time to rise' to 'Sing sleepy tales'. The adorable illustrations picture a black baby with two tufty bobbles of hair.
While books recognise diversity by including ethnic minority children in their illustrations, there are still so few which have a black child as central.
The songs and rhymes are performed on a separate CD, and there are ample suggestions for appropriate activities to accompany them within the book.
The songs have a light, folky feel in singing style and arrangements. There are some gems here - I particularly liked the lovely version of 'Pat-a-Cake Baker's Man'. This will be invaluable for anyone working with babies and toddlers.
Mrs Moon: Lullabies for Bedtime
Illustrated by Clare Beaton
Barefoot Books, 14.99, ISBN 1 84148 062 2
www.barefootbooks.com
I enjoyed this book of traditional lullabies (with CD included) from the Barefoot company which aim to 'celebrate art and story'. Both this book and the one below, published by the same company, have very attractive illustrations created from stitched fabric collages.
On the CDeach lullaby is sung in a fitting style reflecting different cultures. This is a good quality music production, excellent singing with well played, interesting accompaniments, although some users might find the very American 'edge' to the CD less accessible. This book would be most suitable for one-to-one listening, looking and reading with older babies and toddlers, most likely at bedtime.
We all go travelling by
Written by Sheena Roberts and illustrated by Siobhan Bell
Barefoot Books, 10.99, ISBN 1 84148 023 1
Another Barefoot Book production with CD enclosed, this is a simple, but very effective, cumulative song about travelling by car, bus, boat and so on, which, again, is very well performed on the CD.
This would make a good alternative at story time in a daycare setting or nursery for a small group of toddlers, who can see the attractive book page by page and would enjoy the repetitive, cumulative structure of story and song.
Night Night Sleep Tight - music to send babies and young children to sleep
Produced by Soothing Sounds, 10
The cover for this CD makes all kinds of exaggerated claims supposedly based on 'research'. This is cheaply produced, ice-cream van music made, I guess, on a home midi system. It drove me instantly mad.
Most worryingly, it claims that high sounds (the melodies are a high- pitched tinkling) are most soothing to babies. Yet I know of research-based evidence which says quite the opposite, that babies hear mostly low frequencies in the womb and so find these sounds most calming.
This is invariably the case with 'research' findings - there is conflicting evidence about most aspects, particularly to do with babies. You can't ask a baby which sounds they prefer; the 'results' are arrived at by subtle signs of interest or boredom on the part of the babies being tested. It will be a long time before enough work has been done to say these things for certain, and the researchers themselves would be the first to stress this.
In the meantime, babies and their carers will be much better off listening to songs from the Mrs Moon lullaby book or singing the bedtime songs from Lively Time Playsongs.
