I love seeking out unusual, enjoyable children’s music, to the point that I sometimes listen to it on my own and recommend children’s artists to people who are not and do not have children. But really, I find myself saying, there’s a LOT of good stuff out there right now! There really is. I always planned on having a regular music feature on my blog, but then I found Tune In Tuesday!

The Pop Ups are a great children’s group, and a few of their songs work well in storytimes, including Up and Down, which is my FAVORITE scarf song.

I could find a full version online, but you can hear a snippet on the Amazon page for the album, Outside Voices.  It features varied cartoonish, Muppet-like voices, and a repetitive refrains of “Up and down” and “Turn yourself around.”

The verses are instructions like “pick it up, put it down” and “toss it up, it drops back down” which work beautifully with scarves. The only non-obvious verses are “turn it up, turn it down” – for which I pretend I’m turning a giant volume knob – and “sun goes up, sun goes down,” for which I make a big circle in the air with the scarves.

Kids really seem to love the energy and silliness of it, and there are enough actions to keep them engaged. I use this with both toddler and preschool groups.