Starting the joy of music and books early!

It’s never too early to encourage music with your little ones and Rainbows and Sunshine has some fantastic music for babies. Studies support that babies hear while they are even in the womb and love the sound of music and singing from the time they are born. Especially lovely is to maintain eye contact and move gently with them in your arms as they watch and listen to you.

This gives lots of sensory experiences including those that are visual, auditory and tactile. There are so many benefits in doing music with babies such as bonding with parents, and reading or music can help to calm your baby. Both music and books for your baby help cognition, intellect, gives lots of sensory experiences such as listening, sight, movement and touch, and encourage brain development by building neural pathways. Plus, as they get older, they gain skills in hand control through dancing with you and doing actions to the songs. They will love it and love you for it! Do see our other sections too regarding toddlers and older kids.

Very new babies love to have stories read to them! And this is a great way to encourage joy in reading and books. It’s often about the animated, lilting or different tone people’s voices have when they read stories and as your baby’s eye focus improves they love the coloured pictures and visual stimulation of the books. You could show them any one of the Rainbows and Sunshine books, such as “Black and White Cow”, with their bright, colourful pages from an early age, and we suggest you play the audio songs which come with the books (by CD or download) at the same time. It’s also fun to sing along with the audio! Sing to your baby right from the start…. your voice is magic to their ears, so even if you think you’re off-key, it’s OK and a beautiful thing to do with your baby!

And if your baby is unsettled, or it's a "frazzling" time or day for you, reading or singing to your baby may help you also to get through that period because it may also calm you and enable some of those happy endorphins to kick in.

See this great example below - Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - of one of our lullabies loved by babies and young children! We have lots of feedback on this song about how it's a bedtime or "midnight favourite"! And there are many more... just go to our SHOP in our website menu.