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Our family loves music and our children are always singing or humming a tune as they go about their work and play. So I’m always on the lookout for great music programs for them.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.
I was excited to have the opportunity to review song sets from Happy Kids Songs. I received three sets to use Friends & Sharing, Happiness & Attitude and Manners & Character. Along with these I received Happy Kids Songs Workbook: Hands-on Activities to Build Character, Social & Emotional Skills.
Who Is Happy Kids Songs?
Happy Kids Songs is run by Don MacMannis and Brian Mann.
Dr. Mac aka Don MacMannis is a singer, songwriter, and producer of children’s music. You might be familiar with his work as he was the music director and songwriter for the hit PBS series Jay Jay the Jet Plane.
He has won many awards for his song writing talents. He is also a family and child psychologist. Brian Mann is a songwriter and partner with Dr. Mac. Brian has been writing and performing music since the age of 4!
Happy Kids Songs has produced 8 albums.
- Friends & Sharing
- Social Skills & Bullying
- Feelings & Fears
- Practice & Success
- Talking & Listening
- Manners & Character
- Happiness & Attitude
- Respect & Responsibility
I received 3 sets to use and review, they are Friends & Sharing, Happiness & Attitude and Manners & Character. Each of these contain 5 songs.
Friends & Sharing
Sailing on the Seven Cs ~ This song is about the ingredients of friendship. It mentions caring, consideration, commitment, communication, concern, curiosity and cooperation. It doesn’t teach about each of these things, it only mentions them as being important to friendship.
Everybody Wants to Find a Friend ~ This song teaches that everyone wants a friend and that to make friends you just need to reach out to others.
Sharing Friends ~ This song teaches that it is ok when your friends want to play with other friends. It tries to help with the feelings of being the “odd one out”.
Happy as Happy Can Be ~ This song is about how friendship makes you happy and it feels good to be with a friend.
Together ~ This is similar to Happy as Happy Can Be in that it deals with friendship. Except that this song tries to teach children that even when your not with your friend your still best friends.
This is a music video of the song Together. Audio samples of Friends & Sharing can be previewed on their site.
Happiness & Attitude
Shake It Out and Dance ~ This song is about trying to give things a chance before you decide you can’t do something.
Who Knows What’s a Kudo? ~ This song is about how to give a complement and noticing good things in other people.
I Don’t Understand ~ Is a song about how to handle limitations and that it’s okay to ask questions to learn new things.
Be Good to Yourself ~ This song is about being kind to yourself and saying good things to yourself and others.
Better Together ~ This is another song about how it’s nicer to be with a friend.
Samples of Happiness & Attitude.
Manners & Character
H-o-n-e-s-t-y ~ As it’s title says this song is about how it’s important to tell the truth and shares the reasons why.
The Magic Word ~ This song is about saying please when asking for things.
Quirks ~ This song is about learning to appreciate the differences in other people.
The Golden Rule ~ This song is about teaching consideration for other people. It tries to teach that we shouldn’t name call and tease people.
Six Little Kids ~ This song uses a story of little children feeling different parts of an elephant and having to guess what they are feeling. It is about how people have different perspectives.
Samples of Manners & Character.
We also received the Happy Kids Songs Workbook: Hands-on Activities to Build Character, Social & Emotional Skills. It is 128 pages long, the first part of the book contains the song lyrics as well as coloring and activity pages for the 40 songs.
The activity pages include drawing activities and mazes the type of activity you would expect from a children’s workbook. The back section of the book is for parents and teachers and contains a collection of activities to do with children to help reinforce the message of the songs.
The workbook pages are reproducible!
How Did We Use Happy Kids Songs?
I wasn’t sure how our children would react to these songs. While we do listen to some children’s music, we largely listen to a wide variety of adult music.
I started off by playing the songs while the kids were doing chores and later added some to our circle time. Our older children (ages 8, 10 and 12) felt the songs were a little too “young” for them, but our 7 year old loved them! Our youngest age 5 was fairly neutral on the songs. Just not his style I guess.
What Do I Think Of Happy Kids Songs?
Happy Kids Songs are well written and performed professional songs. We enjoyed some of the songs, but I think it’s important to mention they are not Christian based songs.
While they teach good manners and try to instill good character I believe that you need to take it further and teach WHY God teaches these things. I do think that many of these songs would be a good introduction to a character study.
I didn’t find anything offensive in the songs that I listened to and it is nice to have “clean” songs for little ones to play! I think these would be a good fit for anyone looking for early childhood songs in daycare and kindergarten groups. They will continue to be part of our younger children’s music mix since dd7 enjoys them so much.
You can buy each album containing 5 songs for $4.95 or download the songs individually for .99. Each song has free downloadable activity pages. The Happy Kids Songs Workbook: Hands-on Activities to Build Character, Social & Emotional Skills is $12.56. Happy Kids Songs are intended for children ages 4 to 8.
