Touch an elephant's trunk to hear the plucking of a double bass. Draw a line with your finger to create a melody that a train will play. Tap on flying birds to tweet Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. These are some of the many ways apps can introduce children to music. Here's a closer look at four fun apps that use play to introduce young children to music.


Jiyoung Lee, best for ages 6-8, Free, iPad

Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)

This music-creation app uses a train motif to show kids how to compose music. By drawing train tracks across a scene populated with people and buildings, kids can experiment with creating melodies.

TuneTrain brilliantly makes composing music easy. If you can draw a line, you can create a melody. The app cleverly surrounds each melody with accompaniment that makes even the simplest melody sound rich and varied.

In each musical creation level, kids see buildings and people scattered throughout the scene and a train waiting to chug into the landscape. By using a finger to draw a path for the train to follow, the player becomes a composer. The line starts on the left and must connect to buildings and people, which represent musical notes. If the train passes over a person located high up in the scene, the melody will go up in pitch. The distance between people represents the length that a note is held. After drawing the line going up and down as it snakes its way across the scene, kids then touch a green arrow to start the playback and trigger the train's movement. By following the line created by the player, the train plays a melody, including accompanying chords as it passes over buildings.

In addition to simply listening to the melody, kids can also hear their melody played in different genres of music, such as classical, pop, jazz, rock, Latin and funk. Kids also have the option of seeing their melody written in musical notation and highlighted as played.

Best For: Kids ages 6 to 8, regardless of their interest in music. The train motif will appeal to kids who love all things that go vroom; but the app also has levels that appeal to wider interests. There's one with a candy theme, and another with a rainbow theme, while others sport graveyard, beach, desert or cave themes. Younger kids can give this a go, but they may not fully appreciate the magic of this musical ride.

Animal sound box – learn music with cute animals

francois walter, best for ages 2-4, $.99, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 3.5 stars

Colorful animals become instruments in this musical app for toddlers. An animal fills the screen, inviting kids to reach out and touch. When they touch the green frog's belly, they hear the sound of a drum. If they tap its legs, they hear maracas shake. Toddlers can scroll through five animals to learn about different instruments. With the bird, it's a flute. The elephant produces double bass sounds, while the lion is roaring guitar and marimba sounds. The colorful fish emits xylophone sounds.

What makes this app so much fun is that every part of the animal responds to your child's touch. The eyes of the animal move, and it expresses positive emotion as kids tickle it.

Best For: Toddlers to play with their parents. As kids explore the sounds by touching the animals, parents or siblings can help provide the musical context by explaining what instrument they are hearing.

Musical Me! – by Duck Duck Moose

Duck Duck Moose, best for ages 3-7, $1.99, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 4 stars

Silly animals engage your children in five musical activities that explore rhythm, pitch, instruments and musical notation. One allows kids to rearrange notes on a musical staff to create a song. In another, they play a song by tapping birds that fly by. Budding musicians can try their ear at matching musical sounds and can bang out percussion sounds on virtual instruments. There is even a hilarious dance activity where the animals rock out to different tunes.

Musical Me! introduces children to lots of musical concepts through play. Using lighthearted activities and charming characters, the app makes exploring music a joy.

Best For: Preschoolers and kindergartners who enjoy playing with engaging animals. By making the musical activities whimsical, the app draws in even the most reluctant kid. It provides a few activities that have multiple difficulty levels, so that the app can grow with your child.

Little Fox Music Box – Kids songs – Sing along

Fox & Sheep, best for ages 3-6, $1.99-2.99, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Amazon

Rating: 4 stars

With Little Fox Music Box, kids explore three song scenes filled with hotspots that produce hilarious animations when touched. In the Old MacDonald song scene, kids will find farm animals doing silly things, such as a pig in a bathtub. With the Evening Song scene, kids see gentle scenes about animals getting ready for bed. And in the London Bridge song scene, funny things like a whale jumping out of a river or an alligator holding a red balloon appear. In each of these three scenes, the words to the songs appear as sung, or kids can sing them karaoke-style and record their performance.

In addition to scene exploration, this app hosts a music-creation center in the fox's burrow. But you won't find traditional instruments here; instead, you make music by tapping ladles, teapots, croaking frogs or tweeting birds. This music is full of silly noises and unexpected sounds, to which you can add your own voice and record a song.

Best For: kids who love surprises. This app creates an interactive music box where the scenes change by kids touching them. Little Fox Music Box is an enchanting and thoroughly engaging way to explore music.


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