Teaching your children manners and how to respond appropriately in various social situations are important skills and shouldn't be taken lightly. But teaching kids these skills in a light-hearted and fun manner is a great way to make those lesson stick and help to hold your children's attention! Dr. Mac, the music director and songwriter for the PBS hit series, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, produced these songs, along with Brian Mann to boost kids’ character, social and emotional skills.
Happy Kids Songs has a series of downloadable songs whose purpose is to help you teach your children about Friends & Sharing , Happiness & Attitude , and Manners & Character as well as a physical workbook with lots of activities to help your children learn and remember important concepts on these topics. I was happy to be given the chance to review them with my children and to tell you about them as well.
On the album for Friends & Sharing, there are songs focusing on how to be a good friend. In the song, "Sailing on the Seven C's", it talks about the seven "C's" of being a good friend: caring, consideration, commitment, communication, concern, curiosity, and cooperation. In the workbook you'll find the lyrics to the songs as well as coloring pages, word scrambles and then in the back more parent-directed discussions to go along with each theme. My kids enjoyed The Seven C's song the best on this album, there's a picture my 8 year old son drew about it below.
On the Happiness & Attitude album there are songs talking about changing your "I can't" to and "I can", giving compliments, enjoying time together and more. The music is upbeat and cheerful and my kids enjoyed bopping along to the beat as they listened.
The last album we reviewed was Manners and Character which discussed subjects like honesty, saying please and using the Golden rule. This was my favorite as a mom, since these topics come up often on our house, it was nice to have the reinforcement of someone else reminding them of the importance of consideration.
All the songs on these albums were upbeat and lively and my kids enjoyed listening and even attempting to sing a long with several. I believe that the true test will come as they listen more and more and start to remember the words. I know in our house we often use music to memorize our Scripture verses and I find that, even as an adult, these are the Scriptures that stick with me the longest so I have no doubt of the effectiveness of music as an excellent teaching tool for children and adults alike!
I'd say my kids are pretty happy, wouldn't you? =)
Children ages 0-9 are likely to enjoy these albums, which can be downloaded and burned to a CD or using an MP3 player. They cost $4.95 each. The workbook, which includes 122 pages with activities for all 8 of the albums in this series and is reproducible for your family is $12.56 through amazon (available with Prime free shipping as well)
If you would like to follow Happy Kids songs on social media, you can do so below:
Twitter: @howsyourfam
YouTube
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