Musical Activities for Toddlers

Since I have a 12 month old, this has been a recurring theme of late.

Movement and Music Activities for Toddlers:

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

1. Sit on the floor across from your child, legs spread far enough apart so that you can hold hands.
2. Pull your child toward you, then lean forward and have your child lean back.
3. Continue the rocking motion, forward and back, as you sing the familiar song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or other rocking rhymes. 

I Hear Thunder

This is sung to the tune of "Frère Jacques," or "Are You Sleeping?"

I hear thunder, I hear thunder, (Drum feet on the floor.)
Hark, don't you, hark, don't you? (Pretend to listen.)
Pitter-patter raindrops, (Flutter your fingers for raindrops.)
Pitter-patter raindrops,
I'm wet through, (Shake your body vigorously.)
So are you! (Point to your child.)

Read more on FamilyEducation: http://fun.familyeducation.com/toddler/music/36975.html#ixzz2gg84j75W

From Kindermusik's website: 

• Singing and vocal play along with Story Time, chants, and finger plays all help stimulate language development in a fun and pressure-free way.
   
• Vocal Development – For toddlers, learning to use their voices starts with imitating sounds, playing with the many sounds our voices can make, singing short songs, and chanting simple rhymes – all with you as a model and inspiration.

• Cognitive Development – You’ll be able to enhance your child’s growing comprehension and cognitive skills through happy classroom routines like coming to get instruments and putting them away, musical activities that invite clapping and tapping to music, and themes that engage the toddler’s delightful sense of curiosity and imagination. 

• Gross Motor Skills – Toddlers on the go love all their Kindermusik classes – we’re never still for very long!  From holding and shaking instruments to running and jumping to stopping and going, you will enjoy being part of helping your child’s skills blossom through a wide variety of creative movement.

• Fine Motor Skills – At a child when your child is becoming more and more independent, a little practice with smaller-sized instruments, finger plays, and turning pages ...means that the hand muscles learn to cooperate more and more with the brain.

• Social Emotional Development – There’s no doubt that your toddler is becoming his own little person, but he still needs you as his anchor of security.  Kindermusik ensures your child’s healthy social and emotional development through predictable routines and special rituals, being around other children, practice with sharing, and best of all, play time with you.

• Musical Development – Toddlers are delighted by music, and there’s no better time than in these early years to inspire what will become a lifelong love for music....from drumming to singing to dancing together.

Activities I thought of from reading this: 

Musical Chairs

Musical Red Light Green Light:

Play music, children dancing, using instruments (drums, rattles, recorder)

Freeze when music goes off.

imitating sounds ( animals, hi, lo, long, short, fast, slow, happy, sad, instruments)

songs and fingerplay