Educational Music for Busy Families on the Go

These days, families are busier than ever balancing work, school, activities, and simple household chores. This makes it difficult to find time for additional learning activities outside of school. Additionally, this time constraint makes it challenging to effectively prepare preschool age children with the fundamentals needed for kindergarten.

Families are often faced with the reality of both parents needing to work. Forty years ago, this was not as prevalent since mom often stayed home to raise the kids and could devote the time to supplement educational activities. The time spent at home gave children a boost when it came to preparing for and engaging in elementary school. The foundations put in place at an early age provided the needed head start. This allowed generations of children to begin their schooling successfully and to continue on through high school and college with the same success.
To help parents and guardians solve this challenging issue, parents should consider leveraging educational music and videos for use in the car or during times when there is down time for their children.

There are multiple companies that offer this type of content and media for children. A few things that parents and teachers should look for include:

- Music that focus on storytelling and phonetics to help children learn basic concepts and sounds;
- Images in videos that help children correlate the concepts that they have heard about with pictures, allowing children to learn from both audiation and visualization;
- Media that has repetitive themes which will help children remember content and concepts; and
- Songs that are upbeat to maintain the positive mood and feeling of achievement.

These types of key components can be very powerful for children. Leveraging this type of content can help preschool and early elementary children turn play time into class time and class time into play time.
Parents can quickly implement this type of media into their daily routines by simply playing music and videos while on the way to the store, commuting to and from school, and before and after afternoon activities. By taking a few simple steps now, parents can help give their children a real leg up as they prepare for and begin their educational adventure.

Author: John Henneberger

Sign up for our monthly newsletter at www.sillybus.net to have these sent to you!

Kids Music - Branding Through Educational Media

As consumers we are drawn to familiar brands that consistently provide great products and services. Brand loyalty is sometimes inherited from our parents (i.e., Do you prefer Pepsi or Coca Cola?). It is also earned through a company’s dedication to quality.

Even the best products and services, though, can go unnoticed or be forgotten. Competition is fierce, and no matter what a company’s line of business, there is almost certainly a comparable provider in the market. To raise awareness and to stay fresh in consumer minds, companies should break the mold and think of creative ways to make a lasting, meaningful impression. Branding through educational media offers just that.

Educational media, as used in this article, refers to kids songs and kids videos containing substantive messages designed to teach children subjects like math, science, fitness and green living. One way for companies to make an impact, raise brand awareness and grow goodwill is to supplement the traditional “pushing” of products with educational media. Educational media through kids songs and kids videos enables companies to use radio, television and bandwidth for the greater good.

By providing consumers and their children with useful and sometimes otherwise unavailable information in fun, entertaining kids songs and kids videos, a company enriches its brand in a number of ways. First, the company shows its engagement in the community and desire to be more than just a product or service provider. Second, the company builds its goodwill with current and future customers by using its resources to give back to the community. Third, the company shows its drive to do something meaningful for its customers. And fourth, the company gives consumers a reason to feel good about doing business with it.

Ultimately, a company wants consumers to know its name, associate good thoughts with its products or services and to remember this when opening their wallets. Commercials and traditional marketing campaigns are great, but sometimes it pays to think outside the box. Companies wishing to do something meaningful and beneficial for their community and their brand should explore educational media and all it has to offer.

For more information, please visit: www.sillybus.net

Making a Difference with Educational Music

At the beginning of 2005, Silly Bus was nothing more than a start up small business. Today, they have released nationally four CDs, and multiple music videos, which can be heard and seen on stations throughout the United States. They have played for numerous benefits, kids’ expos, and schools. They have also worked with well known companies, such as Radio Disney, XM Radio and NBC.

You may be asking yourself, ‘So, how is their music making a difference?’ What distinguishes Silly Bus from other kids music is their focus on educational content. Their first CD release focused on Standard of Learning (SOL) content for young children (Kindergarten through 2nd grades). The songs on this album cover a range of topics, including math, grammar, science, physical fitness, and history.

For their second and third CD releases, they teamed with preschool educators to write songs geared towards learning the alphabet. These songs incorporate both phonics and whole language techniques. The song Turkey Time has fast become a national favorite having been featured on NBC’s Today Show the past two years on Thanksgiving Day.

In addition to these releases, Silly Bus has worked with several companies and non-profits to launch multiple CDs and singles. For example, Silly Bus wrote, performed and produced “Watch Me, I Can Do This!” for promotional support of SportsBackers’ Monument Avenue 10K. This motivational song was used to energize thousands of children participating in the event’s annual kids run. Similarly, Silly Bus teamed with Media General and The Richmond Times Dispatch (RTD) to promote and market RTD’s “Kids Extra” kidzine. Silly Bus wrote, performed and produced “Artie,” the Kids Extra theme song. The song received significant airplay in advertisements and on the web.

The powerful difference Silly Bus makes is evident in the small anecdotes heard from parents. One story from a father conveyed how a Silly Bus song helped his daughter answer a question on her first grade quiz. This powerful difference is not unusual. Attend a Silly Bus show near you, and you are sure to witness children singing every word of their favorite fun, educational songs.

For more information, please visit: www.sillybus.net