Many who work with young children devise and personalise songs to help their development and learning. But we cannot assume that such material will automatically translate to other play groups or key stage 1 classrooms.

Although this series of songs, activities and music and movement material for three to seven-year-olds offers a wide range of ideas, it may not be quite the right material in a multilingual and multicultural environmen.

That said, each book has 12 catchy songs with simple actions (although one or two are quite wordy) and lots of activities.

The songs are linked to movement activities, some of which are more appropriate for the youngest children. The accompanying CD contains the songs with vocals, and just the backing tracks and music separately. Section 3 in each book draws together all the ideas into a simple “musical episode”.

The series has obviously grown out of involvement with a particular group and will provide some busy teachers with useful material.