From Ages 1-3, toddlers are incredibly receptive to learning about the language of music. They learn to clap, stomp, sing, play finger games & their vocabulary will explode given a lot of musical exposure. Here you can learn more about starting music lessons with kids this young and how using Prodigies can help!
Where To Start Prodigies With My Toddler?
The first step to start with your toddler is to enroll with Prodigies!
After you enroll, check out the following:
Totigies
If you’re looking for a screen-free listening activity to get started, drop by Totigies!
Playtime Prodigies
Then, when you’re ready for video lessons, jump into Playtime Prodigies, where we focus on easy and instrument free practice.
General Music
We’ve also heard of 2 year old baby geniuses playing through some of our Playtime Prodigies and Melodies lessons. If you’re excited and want to jump in with younger kids, these are good places to check out.
In both Playtime and General Music Level 1, we have fun and easy music lessons that your child will enjoy watching!
Instruments + Books We Recommend For Toddlers
Our Deskbells are durable and easy to play and allow toddlers to receive meaningful and memorable play with pitch during their critical period for auditory development.
You can find C Major Bells at Prodigies.com.
Toddlers are also ready to rock out on percussion of all kinds — from bongos to shakers to floor drums and more. This is a great time for kids to explore all kinds of musical sounds and instruments.
We recommend to follow along with the Playtime Prodigies Workbook (included in Prodigies Plus as a PDF download!): 102 pages of simple activities like line drawing, finger tracing, coloring & matching that’s designed for toddlers!
Key Concepts To Focus On For Ages 1-3
With infants and toddlers, you want to focus on giving them three types of musical exposure.
Free Play
All kids learn through play, and simply having musical instruments & activities around the home or classroom is the first step to activating your child’s sense for musical wonder
Meaningful Exposure To Individual Notes
This is the important and powerful idea of letting children explore one note at a time with bells, Boomwhackers or other instruments that let you focus on a single note. This is what Prodigies excels at, especially for young kids.
High Information Music
Letting kids listen to complicated music (jazz, classical, north Indian, improv, etc) will help expand their idea for what’s possible for music. For a great High Information Music app, check out Nuryl.
Singing, Composing & Improvising
Once kids start becoming more verbal, you can do A TON of work by just singing different songs, melodies, rhymes and folk songs.
At 2 and a half, our daughter just sings about EVERYTHING she’s doing. Painting, cooking in her kitchen, getting dressed – – she sings about everything.
At this age, attention spans are super short. Thankfully, you can sing about pretty much anything, so it can happen more regularly throughout the day.
We do our best to model this by parodying our favorite songs with funny things happening at home. We sing about brushing our teeth, getting dressed, going for walks – all the best stuff!
Musical Activities To Try With Your Toddler
The blog post below is also a great place to start for fun infant and toddler musical activities!