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Music CD's That are Both Fun & Educational

By Denise Etheridge


A Musical Safari

The African Playground CD with its thrilling, rousing rhythms is a great way to introduce a child to the cultures of Africa. The CD contains music from Benin, Kenya, South Africa, Congo, Senegal, Madagascar, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Cape Verde. You are taken on a musical safari across Africa. All of the music is performed by musicians who are well known in the featured country

The CD comes with a small booklet that gives a brief history of each song and the country from which the song originated. You’ll recognize “Mbube.” English words were added to this South African melody and the song became the international hit “A Lion Sleeps Tonight.” African Playground was produced by Putumayo. You can learn more about this outstanding company by going to www.putumayo.com.


A Space Expedition

The Flumpa’s World – out of this world CD is a whimsical musical space expedition that features Wendy Whitten and Rick Florian. Each song combines a rhythmic melody with words that excite your child's imagination as they teach your child about the universe. The songs on this CD are upbeat and playful. A particularly clever song is titled “ROY G. BIV,” which happens to be an acronym for the colors in the light spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. This song teaches children about color.

Flumpa’s World – out of this world was produced by Ion Imagination records. Ion Imagination produces entertaining educational material that focuses on science. To find out more about Ion Imagination records, go to www.flumpa.com.


A Game of Guess Who

The Guess Who Zoo is children’s theater captured on a CD. It’s fun, it’s games and, if that is not enough, it educates! On this CD, lyricist Howard Eisenberg and composer Sherwin Kaufman collaborated to create a series of guessing games about zoo animals. Each song provides a series of clues, and you have to guess the animal. Here is an example:

Grownups applaud and children cheer
When I do back-flips on my ear
For me though it is no big deal
It’s really easy for a _ _ _ _.

The answer is seal, of course.

The Guess Who Zoo CD is distributed by Museum Music. To learn more about The Guess Who Zoo, go to www.guesswhozoo.com.


Denise Etheridge is a freelance writer and the webmaster for www.LittleDittle.com. The website, www.LittleDittle.com, is for children age three to seven.