Miss J is singing too! – JD, 4
We were recently sent Old MacDonald Had a Farm Music for Kids (a Jingle Puzzle). It’s an activity pack pitched as “an entertaining way to introduce music and further observation skills” for 3-6 year olds.
With a price tag of £9.99, the pack contains a fairly impressive number of items:
- A 1000mm x 200mm floor jigsaw puzzle with large pieces
- Sing-along CD with Old MacDonald Had A Farm and 11 more children’s animal songs, plus a bonus audio story, The Three Little Pigs
- 24 peel-able activity stickers
- Sing-along song sheet with colourable jigsaw image and further activity ideas
The illustrations on all of the materials are lovely – really colourful, friendly and bright. The jigsaw has plenty going on to keep the conversation going and the activity sheet is equally attractive with question prompts and plenty to do, although possibly a little too basic for the upper end of the target age range.
On the minus side, the lyrics on the activity sheet are in a very small font size for preschoolers to read, and sadly only cover the title song and not the other tracks on the CD.
Unfortunately, I was also disappointed with the quality of the music on the CD. As a family, we love singing together – with or without music – and I applaud any product that aims to help facilitate that, but the voices on the CD often sing with unclear diction and at slightly different paces so that they are intermittently out of synch, making it hard to make out the lyrics.
Of course, it’s still possible to enjoy the CD by singing along, which we did at length, but as this is an educational pack, I’d like the vocals to be clear and easy to follow so that children can engage fully with the materials. At the moment, it’s a bit of a hindrance.
So, a mixed review. Certainly not a poor product, but room for improvement.
Disclosure: we were sent Jingle Puzzle’s Old MacDonald Had a Farm Music for Kids for review. No payment was received and all posts are 100% honest.
