Happy Kids Songs~A Schoolhouse Crew Review

You may remember from previous posts of mine (or you may just know me in real life) that we are a music-loving family. The kids are always sitting around listening to music (well, not all day long, but as often as possible), and we always have the radio on when we’re in the car going to town. Rach even has her radio on all night long in her bedroom.(I used to do this when I was a teenager, but can’t stand to do it now. It keeps me awake.)

I love finding new products that I think our family will enjoy, and learning about new vendors. We were given the opportunity to review Happy Kids Songs Workbook: Hands-on Activities to Build Character, Social, and Emotional Skills, as well as 3 sets of songs via download: Friends & Sharing, Happiness & Attitude, and Manners & Character from Happy Kids Songs. The products are geared towards ages 3-8. The cost of the workbook at the time of posting is $12.56, and the song sets are $4.95 for each set of 5 songs. The songs can of course be burned to a CD, added to an MP3 player, or just played from your computer.

Volume 1, Friends & Sharing, includes the following songs: Sailing on the Seven C’s, Everybody Wants to Find a Friend, Sharing Friends, Happy as Happy Can Be, and Together. Volume 5, Happiness & Attitude, includes: Shake it Out and Dance, Who Knows What’s a Kudo?, I Don’t Understand, Be Good to Yourself, and Better Together. Finally, Volume 6, Manners & Character, includes: H-o-n-e-s-t-y, The Magic Word, Quirks, The Golden Rule, and Six Little Kids. A little fun fact for you: Dr. Mac, the composer of the songs, is also the musical director and songwriter for Jay Jay the Jet Plane. Most of the songs are fun and catchy, and really stick in your head. Other songs are a bit more serious, but they still drive the topic home. The songs are secular in nature, but are still very moral. I’m really glad we received the Manners & Character set, because I am working on that a lot with Lucas, and this is something fun and easy to use to help reinforce what he’s learning.

The workbook is 125 pages long, and contains an activity pages for each song, as well as the lyrics to each. This is great for me because I usually have trouble keeping up with song lyrics when I first hear something, and it makes it easier for Lucas to learn the songs if I can sing along with him. Most of the actual activities are over his head, such as cross word puzzles and filling in missing letters, but there are also coloring pages, mazes, and tic tac toe activities that the littles can do. The second half of the book contains more in-depth activities to go along with the songs, to use in sort of a classroom/teaching setting if you wish. It also tells you what the focus topic of each song is, and the concepts taught in the songs.

Lucas really enjoyed the songs and the workbook activities that he was able to do. We just played the songs on the computer during the review period. I’ll probably try to add them to the kids’ iPod soon, since they listen to music on it fairly often. The songs are a great tool to use to teach morals, or to help reinforce what you’re already using to teach your children. There are other volumes of songs available to purchase other than the ones we received. I love how easy this is to incorporate into your day.

Be sure to click below and read reviews from my fellow Crew Mates. We all received the same product, and it’s fun to see what others do with something! You can follow along with Happy Kids Songs on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Thanks for stopping by!