Price: $14.97

Isabelle’s school put on two Christmas musicals this year - Bugsy Malone with the older kids and Annie with the younger. I didn’t really know what to expect, I hadn’t been to a school musical since I played Gertie Cummins (yes, a girl - I went to an all-boys school from the age of 8 ) in “Oklahoma!” myself, but I ended up enjoying it enormously. Doing these things as a kid, making a mistake IN FRONT OF ALL THOSE PEOPLE was horrifying, but when you’re in the audience the mistakes and the oddball things the children do are most of the fun - like a girl in senior infants reprimanding her classmate for looking the wrong way on stage, or a looooong pause in the dialogue ending in one boy reminding another of his lines in a loud whisper.

Isabelle’s class played a chorus of orphans. They shuffled onstage in their “orphanage-y” outfits, holding hands and blinking in the stage lights and looking tiny, to sing and do a kind of action dance during two of the songs. Really the experience was a bit overwhelming for Isabelle - she had sung the songs at home enough that Heather picked up the chorus of “Tomorrow” (singing “Tomowwo, onee a dee aweee” in her high chair), but on stage she spent half her time try to spot me and Niamh in the crowd, staring at the older girls and licking her lips over and over. She was still my favourite actor on the stage, of course, but I think she’ll enjoy it more next year.

This CD has become very popular in the house since. The big hit has been “The Hard-Knock Life” (you might know the chorus from the Jay-Z tune) which has knocked “Emmo dong” (”Elmo’s Song”, from Sesame St) off the number 1 spot in Heather’s most-requested-music list. “Daddeee! Had not IIIIFE!”, she says. Quite right too, it’s an absolute cracker. Other favourites are “Maybe” and “You’re never fully dressed without a smile”, and they’ve infiltrated themselves into mine and the kids’ consciousness to the extent that, at this stage, we’re starting to wreck Niamh’s head:

“Aaaargh! Guys! Please! It’s like I’m surrounded by the cast of Annie with you all breaking into song! Can’t you be quiet for JUST ONE MINUTE?”

Price: $16.33

I mustn’t have watched much TV as a kid, because when people around me have nostalgic conversations about Grange Hill and He-Man and the like I’m utterly lost, but, like everyone else who grew up in the 70s, I did watch Sesame Street. I honestly can’t remember what I thought of it at the time, but then we put this CD on in the kitchen and heard:

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street

Niamh, washing the dishes, just said “Oooooooh!”. Then on came:

Who are the people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood

In your neigh-bour-hood …

… and I couldn’t stop grinning, I felt like I was 5 again. Obviously not every song you might have loved in your childhood is here (like the sadly absent “One of these kids is doing his own thing”), but there’s a wide enough selection from across the years to put a smile on the face of any grown-up - from “C is for Cookie” to “Elmo’s song”.

As for Isabelle’s and Heather’s reactions - well, Sesame St is famous for testing everything they do on kids and only using stuff that the kids really engage with, and it shows. They’ve never seen the show, but Isabelle has really taken to the characters just based on the songs - “Who’s singing this? Grover? Is he a boy? He sounds like Mrs. Piggy.” (yes, Mrs. Piggy, she doesn’t really get the Mrs./Miss thing just yet - she calls Heather “Little Mrs. Mischief”) - and now she’s listening to lyrics a bit she’s getting a big kick out of the idea of monsters singing about how much they love rubbish and frogs lamenting their colour. And Heather spent Friday morning squealing with delight while “dancing” her baby dolly up and down on the kitchen floor to “Rubber Duckie”.

So - a fun nostalgic treat for adults, and the kids dig it too.

Price: $14.97

Mary Poppins is one of the two kids DVDs in my parents’ house, and it’s the one Isabelle always wants to watch when we visit. If you haven’t seen the film then you should - recently Isabelle was watching a bit of it before bed, and after she was tucked in myself and Niamh and both my parents all sat down and had an absolute blast watching the rest. It’s funny and crazy and warm-hearted, with an ending that’ll make any Dad cheer.

The songs were written, funny enough, by the Sherman brothers who also wrote the music for The Jungle Book - real old-school professional songwriters whose father was also a songwriter, on Tin Pan Alley, and whose grandfather had been a composer in the court of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. They won Best Song and Best Musical Score Oscars for this, and the music is so different from The Jungle Book you’d hardly believe the same people wrote it. Instead of jazz it’s English music hall, which means there’s sentimental ballads like “Feed the birds”, comic songs like “I love to laugh” and dance numbers with oom-pahs and frantic singalong choruses like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Every single song is a knockout and, though the performances are far less “perfect” then you’d find in more recent Disney films - Julie Andrews is probably the only actor in this who’d be allowed sing in a modern movie - they’re bursting with character and all the better for it. I really can’t recommend this highly enough, it’s a true cast-iron classic - I even love Dick Van Dyke’s (as Bert) famously terrible cockney accent.

Speaking of Dick Van Dyke as Bert, I was casting around for his name when we were listening to the CD in the kitchen last week and Isabelle says “I know his name, it’s Youbert”. Youbert? It was only when “Jolly Holiday” came on and Mary sang “It’s a jolly holiday with you, Bert” did I realise where she got it from. So she’s listening to the words now, hmmm. I think it’s time to discreetly hide about half my CDs.

Price: $14.97

Brilliant, traditional jazz flavoured songs sung by cartoon animals. You’ve probably heard “The Bear Necessities” and “King of the Swingers” (”ooh-ooh-ohh, I wanna be like you-oo-oo”), and there’s other crackers on it too - an eastern-sounding lullaby sung by a snake trying to hypnotise a boy (so he can eat him), a barbershop quartet of vultures and a military march sung by a herd of elephants.

The first “Jungle Book” CD we had came free with some newspaper, and Isabelle listened to it and mauled it until it wouldn’t play anymore. When we moved into our current house just before she turned two she was at the peak of her obsession, and treated my visiting brother and his girlfriend to her rendition of “The Bear Necessities” while they looked on in astonishment:

“Look for the bear necessities the simpa bear necessities forget about you wowwies and you stwife if you look unda the wocks and plants an take a glance at the fancy ants you eat ants you betta believe it and you gonna love the way they tickle lookforthebearnecessitiesTHESIMPABEARNECESSITIES …”

etc., getting faster and faster, and  accompanied by a kind of twirling/jumping dance that got more and more frenzied. Eventually we had to stop her before she blew up.

She still loves it, and asks to listen to it lots, and me and her amuse Heather by singing the elephants’ marching song and while we march round and round the kitchen.

On this CD it’s not just the songs, there’s also the underscore (the instrumental music that plays in the background during the film) and some bonus material including songs recorded for a “Jungle Book 2″ record back in the day, songs recorded for the first draft of the film - much darker, apparently, and truer to the original book, until Walt Disney heard “The Bear Necessities” and pushed the film in a new direction - and an interview with the songwriters that isn’t of much interest to the kids but that I found kinda fascinating (it’s amazing how much influence the song had on the film’s plot and visuals). It’s all very good, but after the first week or so Isabelle started asking me to skip to the “hits” - not really a criticism, it’d be hard for an instrumental underscore in particular to match the excitement of such high-quality songs.

Isabelle spent a while one evening examining the inlay card, and said “That’s not a real bear, it’s just a man pretending to be a bear.” “Very good”, says I, “that’s right”.

“Wearing a bear suit”, says she.

“Em … no … y’see that’s just a drawing of a bear.”

“He’s wearing a bear suit.”

“No … it’s a cartoon, y’see, the whole film is a bunch of drawings of people and animals shown really quickly one after the other …”

“So it’s a real bear? No it’s not, it’s a man dressed up!”

“Well, it’s a man’s voice …”

… and so on and on and on. Eventually I gave up. I think I might have to wait until she’s 4