Are Musical Toys Good for Toddlers?
Music is a unique approach to communication, education, and relaxation. From an early age, we are drawn to the rhythmic sounds of musical instruments and the comforting sound of parents’ voices when they sing or hum.
- Are Musical Toys Good for Toddlers?
- What are the benefits of musical toys?
- Toddler Development
- Does Music Improve a Childs’s Motor Skills?
- Does music improve hand-eye coordination?
- Does music help with sensory development?
- Is it good for toddlers to listen to music?
- Benefits of Music for Babies and Toddlers
- What to get a toddler who loves music?
Even without formal training or lessons, our bodies naturally move to music we hear nearby or in the distance. Studies throughout the years have shown research that proves to be in favor of early introductions to music and musical instruments as having a significant positive impact on children’s development.
No “one way works best” scenario exists for music and toddlers. Instead, multiple avenues for implementing, encouraging, and enjoying music provide a well-rounded experience for growing minds.
Infants can recognize songs before learning any words. Familiar tunes, beats, and sounds can excite and soothe simultaneously. The joy music brings continues into the toddler years.
Once a child can stand and walk independently, they can also start to dance, clap, shake, bang, and make out a few words in their favorite songs.
What are the benefits of musical toys?
Moving, clapping, banging, tapping, and shaking are all fundamental steps to improve gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and sensory development.

Toddler Development
Does Music Improve a Childs’s Motor Skills?
Fine and gross motor skills are used while playing with age-appropriate musical toys.
Drumming, playing on a piano, or strumming a guitar all use skills necessary for holding, squeezing, pushing, placing, tapping, and coordinating hand movements.
With closed hands, open hands, or gliding hands, there is a place and time for each instrument to utilize different skills that further develop motor skills.
Does music improve hand-eye coordination?
Whether your toddler is playing for fun or taking formal instrument lessons, hand-eye coordination is essential.
To see what is happening around the child or read sheet music but continue to use their preferred musical toy or instrument at the same time requires seeing and feeling.
Musical toys do not need to be full-sized editions for a toddler to have fun and learn.
Starting with a smaller-sized toy is an excellent way to help enhance hand-eye coordination and allow a toddler to experiment with different instruments.

Does music help with sensory development?
Seeing, touching, and hearing is crucial to a toddler’s sensory support and development.
Understanding the sounds that a forceful bang and a light tap will create when playing on a set of toy drums helps a toddler to differentiate input and output.
The same idea can be applied to piano keys, triangles, cymbals, and tambourines.
Feeling the difference in guitar strings, piano keys, the smooth steel of a triangle, and the length of drumsticks allows a child to experience different materials that all create sound.
The visual appearance of each instrument can also be used to teach how and why specific sounds are produced.
Is it good for toddlers to listen to music?
While a parent, guardian, or caregiver may not want to hear “Mary had a little lamb” for the one-hundredth time in a two-hour time frame, toddlers love simple songs they find easier to remember.
The more a song is played, the more a toddler can remember, which means the more enjoyment and accomplishment that comes from sharing what they know with friends and family. Enhanced memory skills are beneficial for mathematical and linguistic skills too. Musical toys offer the same opportunity to improve memory with repetitious play.
When a song they know is played on the radio, on a CD, on a favorite children’s show, or at a live performance, they can identify sounds they have memorized from their musical toys and create a deeper connection to songs and sounds around them.

Benefits of Music for Babies and Toddlers
Listening to soft and peaceful music is soothing for anxious and sleeping children. Soft music provides a moment of relaxation and induces feelings of calmness.
Energetic music creates feelings of happiness and encourages dancing and moving around.
While both situations are fantastic for toddlers and have a place in the brain and cognitive development, creating music is the next step and has an even more powerful impact.
Making music improves moods, reduces stress, encourages individuality, promotes social connections, boosts concentration, and creates a bridge across the two hemispheres of the brain for faster message sending and receiving.
What to get a toddler who loves music?
- Drums
- Piano
- Tambourine
- Hand Bells
- Triangle
- Cowbell
- Xylophone
- Maracas
- Cymbals
- Rhythm Sticks
- Loog Guitar