Family Lives has produced a series of videos to encourage parents, carers and family members to sing with their babies and young children.

The videos are a great tool to encourage families to sing with their young children, they include actions on the video that families can easily follow and notes about the benefits of each song for the young child such as developing language and fine motor skills.

Singing songs together helps with language development, developing movement and flexibility and also helps children to understand emotions and the world around them. Singing songs or nursery rhymes with your baby or child is a great way to spend time together and help them grow and develop at the same time.

Our videos include Incy Wincy Spider, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, Row, Row, Row your Boat and many more. They are short, informative and fun!

The benefits of singing together include:

• Supporting your child’s language development by helping to develop an understanding of the permanence and meaning of words. Lots of songs use rhyme and this helps children to remember the words.
• Singing together helps children’s understanding of a range of emotions. It also helps them learn about relationships with others and themselves, such as linking their actions with other people’s actions.
• Lots of nursery rhymes have movements which is great to help babies develop a sense of self and an awareness of their body. It helps to develop their ability to move their body, and they will be able to do more complex movements with the whole body as they develop and get older. It helps them start to link sounds with actions.
• The rhythm and beat of songs also helps to underpin a child’s mathematical development, as does learning music or making up their own songs.
• Nursery rhymes and songs that are about nature and the world are a great way for children to learn how things work, such as how animals move, or what a farmer does.
• Singing together is also important on a community level, and helps to develop a shared language, meaning and culture.

Parents featured in the videos said:

“Singing with Indigo makes me feel close to him, it really allows me to connect with him after a long day at work and make those few hours I have with him special.” David, dad of Indigo

“I feel that singing with Elijah makes me feel very close to him, it’s such a warming feeling when you see your child singing with you. It brings a glow to you.” Bournetta, mum of Elijah

We would be very grateful if you could take the time to go through our videos and share them with your contacts, the families you work with, etc. It can be a useful tool/resource in your practice delivery. We will soon have updated videos with translations and will automatically upload these onto the pages. Enjoy the guided videos with your babies and young children.

This project was funded by The Froebel Trust and draws on the Froebelian principle of focusing on development in the early years and the benefits of parents singing with their child to improve relationships within families and intercultural understanding.