You Can Play Too (with your toys... and your dogs)

“I have an idea. It’s lots of fun! Just get out your toy box, and set-up is done!
I have an idea. Sing to your toys! And you can play with them too.”

Did you hear that in your head to the melody of “You Can Play Too” from The Dolphin Collection? If not, listen to the song about 100 more times with your kids and read it again. I promise you will hear it. 

Today’s blog is all about toys. YAY! The actual learning objective of “You Can Play Too" is to make it super easy and fun to sing about your child’s toys! Any time you use a song to sing about something that’s personal and meaningful to your child, you make the SONG personal and meaningful to your child. (See Mr. Rob’s post about meaningful context to learn more!) Once the song is meaningful, then your child will want to sing it over and over again, and then they’ll learn all of the awesome musical concepts from the song! In this case, we’re practicing duple meter and major tonality.

Let’s get playing.

Step 1: Set up toys that your child loves in a row, like a little Music Class.

Step 2: Add a dog?

Step 3: Get attacked by said dog.

Step 4: Regain composure and sing about your child’s toys! Sing a verse about each toy, making up fun rhymes, and dancing with the toy or tapping it to the beat. For younger children, you should lead the song and encourage your child to tap and dance with you. For older children, it’s really fun to encourage them to play the teacher. They can choose which toy they want to sing about next, and how they want to move or act out each verse!

Extra fun tip: This song works great in the bath. Sing about each bath toy and do a little splashing to the beat! (Proceed with caution to not flood the bathroom.) Or even sing about soap and shampoo! “I have some shampoo. It’s lots of fun! It smells super yummy, and suds up a ton!” The possibilities are endless.

The end.