Happy World Down Syndrome Day! Earlier this winter, I attended a webinar featuring Dr. Brian Skotko, the director of the Down Syndrome Program at Massachusets General Hospital. He gave a wonderful, highly informative presentation on how to keep our loved ones healthy, boost their cognition, and how we might mitigate the onset and severity of Alzheimer’s Disease. We all know that keeping our kids active is so important to their overall health, but Dr. Skotko’s presentation showed how this is especially crucial for kids with T21.

One of the easiest ways I keep Junior active is by playing music for him. He loves music, and he loves to dance. So we play music and dance several times a day, and he really gets a workout. Bonus: He learns the lyrics and starts singing along, which is great for his speech.

Today, I’m sharing with you his current playlists of songs and dance music.

When it comes to choosing music for Junior, I look for three things: repetitive lyrics, strong rhythm, and words that are not sung too quickly. A lot of preschool songs are sung at a tempo too fast for Junior to process or repeat.

I also try to expose him to a variety of musical styles: classical children’s songs, bible-based songs, but also songs from musicals, pop, classical, etc.

So, without further ado, here are three playlists he loves dancing to:

Happy Dancing! Happy Singing! 🙂