5 Best Children's Music Albums

Fun and Educational Kids’ Songs that Won’t Drive Parents Crazy

Mar 19, 2009

If most children's music grates on your grown-up nerves, you're not alone. But here are 5 albums that both kids and parents will love listening to in the car or at home.

Whether it’s too sickeningly sweet or too goofy and loud, a lot of kids’ music gets irritating very quickly for parents. These 5 CDs strike a balance that satisfies both kids and adults, and gets kids dancing and moving as they listen.

Parents and children will both love the off-beat and genuinely catchy 42 tracks of Wiggleworms Love You. This album is a great introduction to folk music for the young child, filled with songs that are short, fun, and interactive.

Every track lends itself really well to dance and actions, making them popular at library storytime hours and great for dancing at home. Plenty of the tracks are well-loved classics but there are a lot of lesser-known songs thrown in for variety. French and Spanish are also included in many of the songs. The acoustic-based instrumentation on the album is lively and polished, putting the melody front and center with fun accents in the background. The performers’ talent and genuine enthusiasm makes the CD enjoyable for even moms and dads to listen to over and over.

Laurie Berkner’s debut album is a breath of fresh air for parents. Whaddaya Think of That? is comprised mostly of original songs accompanied by acoustic guitar and piano. The opening song “We Are the Dinosaurs” is exciting and gets little ones moving.

Berkner knows how to encourage children to dance and play along, with notes that suggest movements like jumping, spinning, and flying. Most of the songs are originals, but the few covers on the album are less done-to-death titles like “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” and are reworked with Berkner’s distinctive style. The 21 songs have a strong beat and rhythm, and Berkner's lyrics are creative and fun. She balances lively numbers with slower ballads for a great variety throughout the CD.

This album features 15 songs with catchy lyrics and playful rhymes that encourage kids to participate and dance along. Moving Rhymes for Modern Times engages small children by teaching parts of the body and following directions through play, while capturing older children’s attention with clever, one-of-a-kind rhymes and bigger vocabulary words at the same time.

Kids love Gill’s experimentation with rhyme and language, as well as songs like “Drumming the House” that play with sound in an entirely new way. Moving Rhymes for Modern Times is Gill’s fifth recording for kids and is the winner of the 2007 Notable Children’s Recording award.

If any children’s album ever had variety, then this is it. A Child’s Celebration of the World is a compilation of artists from around the world singing calypso, a cappella, Irish lullaby, Latin rap, Cajun, acoustic guitar, folk music, cultural nursery rhymes, and international favorites. This is truly a rich sampling of music from all over the world—English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, and Swahili are all featured in this album.

Children and parents will enjoy Sweet Honey in the Rock's offbeat a cappella arrangements teaching counting in other languages; they will giggle at songs like “On A Vacation,” which teaches funny phrases like “I forgot to pack my underpants!” and “can I have a pizza, please?” in German, Japanese, and Spanish. Parents and kids will enjoy each of the 18 tracks on the album for their complexity and warmth.

Sing Along with Putumayo is a delightful collection that introduces kids to American roots music. The album ranges from folk to rockabilly to blues, getting kids singing along to offbeat renditions of familiar classics like a funky Memphis soul rendition of “Old Mac Donald” and a Bluegrass cover of Raffi's "Bananaphone." Parents enjoy the variety of styles and voice registers on the album, balanced out with mellower numbers and nostalgic songs like “Soul Train” and a gentle acoustic version of “You Are My Sunshine.”

All of the lyrics are easy to understand and learn. The enclosed CD booklet contains lyrics and a long paragraph discussing the origin and genre of each song, describing the instruments used, and defining vocabulary words. There are many other titles in the Putumayo series for children.

These 5 albums are sure to get children dancing and playing along, but they aren't just for kids. Parents will appreciate the fresh tracks contained on each CD, and won’t even mind when the kids want to hear them over and over again in the car or at home.

The copyright of the article 5 Best Children's Music Albums in Children's Action Songs is owned by Jenny Evans. Permission to republish 5 Best Children's Music Albums in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.