🎵 Children’s Songs en Español🎵
When I began teaching, I knew exactly what I wanted my classrooms to offer to children. I knew what I wanted them to sound like, to feel like, and what I needed the environment to offer as a partner teacher. A big part of that plan was always being very intentional about the language and music used, and the language of the music. That second part proved rather difficult 20-odd years ago. On the exciting occasions when I was able to find songs in Spanish for my classrooms, that enthusiasm would wane as I skipped sadly through track after track, hearing poor quality, poorly pronounced, poorly arranged music that was often inferior to even the worst of the music made for American, English speaking children! It seemed like an impossibility to find music in Spanish, for children, by native Spanish speakers.
A couple of years ago, my weekly baby was a little girl who had one Spanish-speaking, Mexican momma and one Italian-speaking father. Her paternal grandfather is still performing occasionally around the SF Bay Area in his tribute band. I was delighted to find that her family valued and enjoyed music, although neither parent played an instrument. From the time we met when she was 6 months old, I began to structure her day around a set of musical cues— songs for transitions, songs for specific activities, songs to teach, songs to redirect, songs to celebrate, songs for things we found and observed out on the trails and in the fields, open skies and hills around her home… when children spend a great deal of time with me, there is a song for every occasion, no matter how seemingly trivial or mundane!
I created these playlists to support her mother’s desire for her to grow up embracing Spanish as easily as English. During our time alone each day, I not only sang and listened to many of these songs with her, I also read her numerous children’s books in Spanish. I was delighted and amused when, while driving me home one afternoon, her father revealed that he couldn’t take one more Spanish-language children’s song on the weekends! They were all very fine and good, and were clearly very comforting and meaningful to their child, but SURELY there were other songs she could listen to? It was further revealed that, having been taught (by me) to request to listen to music in ASL (and to indicate that she was not satisfied with the selection playing), the baby would wake up in the morning and immediately demand that her music be played from the smart speaker or tablet, and would request that it be continued all day long, as well as in the car during errands and outings.
Taking pity, I tried to make sure that the playlists I created for them were tolerable for adults to listen to during the day, and that they covered a wide range of musical genres. While the majority of the songs presented are in Spanish, I also made sure that I included a number of English language songs sung by native Spanish speakers, as well as Spanish language songs sung by native English speakers. My goal here was not to only find great music for children in Spanish, but to also gently introduce the idea that both Spanish and English comes in a dizzying array of accents and voices.
While I don’t have quite the breadth in these lists that I have in the “Hey, Black Child!” collections of songs, I was able to find enough that they were easily arranged into themed lists, all described below. I would also encourage families to seek out other music by some of these artists to introduce their children to (for example, all songs by Miss Rosi have been removed from iTunes, but I recommend taking a little listen at https://missrositienda.com/). I’ve tried to go all the way from the cast of Sesame Street, to Ella Jenkins and the 80’s childrens group Parchis ( VERY popular in Spain), to newer children’s performers like 123 (uno-dos-tres)Andres, to Joan Baez!
children’s songs en espanol
Muy Listas! is a playlist of songs focused on early learning concepts such as pre-maths, phonemic awareness, and getting ready for school.
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/muy-listas-early-learning-spanish/pl.u-BNA66Y6T1KAEdB
Muy Amable! opens with the Sesame Street classic “Bienvidos!” and the entire playlist is comprised of songs encouraging kindness, friendship, honesty, self-reflection and responsibilty
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/muy-amable/pl.u-PDb44vEFLvG15m
Muevete Mucho! encourages your little one to get up and move… a lot! Many of the songs are music and movement songs, so they offer not only the joy of moving but also encourage children to listen and move. Some of my favourites include Baby Listen’s simple, rhythmic version of the classic “Palmas, Palmitas,” “Un Pequeno Dedo,” by Super Simple Songs (both finger plays appropriate for infants) and “El Danzon y El Cha Cha Cha,” by 123Andres. “Danzon” introduces ordinal numbers in an utterly charming, gentle weaving of several adult voices. If you didn’t speak Spanish, and heard it playing out in the world, you might simply think it was lovely music
Muchos Animales is simply a collection of songs in Spanish about something often of interest to young children of many ages— animals!
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/muchos-animales/pl.u-leyllRYujyW7KB
Muy Cansada is a lovely playlist of lullabies, songs about dreams, and a perfectly peaceful soundrtrack for the entire evening from bathtime to cuddletime to bedime.
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/muy-cansada-lullabies-spanish/pl.u-RRbVVD5t3kyJld