Wee Sing Joins "kidthing" Content for Kids

The content for "kidthing" the new player for children's educational games and literature, has just added kid's music. Wee Sing a leader in music videos, CD's and lyric books for children has agreed to collaborate with kidthing with their brand of musical content through their video library.

According to the kidthing release:

"July 16, 2008, Los Angeles, CA –Wee Sing and kidthing, a web 2.0 global learning platform for children, parents, teachers, family and friends, announced an agreement to bring Wee Sing’s classic series of favorite children’s songs and musical videos to kidthing.

Wee Sing, which has sold over 50 million books, tapes, CDs and videos, will bring its award winning DVD series to a new generation on kidthing. For the first time ever, Wee Sing videos will be available to download as individual songs to kidthing’s digital media player. The music from all 9 award-winning Wee Sing DVDs will be available in the kidthing store beginning this fall, including: Wee Sing in Sillyville, Wee Sing Train, Wee Sing King Cole’s Party, Wee Sing Under the Sea, Wee Sing The Best Christmas Ever, Wee Sing Together, Wee Sing Grandpa’s Magical Toys, Wee Sing in the Big Rock Candy Mountains, and Wee Sing in the Marvelous Musical Mansion.

Wee Sing music enriches the cognitive, physical and social development of children with singing and dancing. Through songs, chants, movement and rhythms, children gain readiness skills of language development, auditory discrimination, body awareness, coordination and self confidence.

At kidthing, parents can preview and purchase fun and engaging content from around the world. The content is automatically downloaded to the kidthing media player, where kids can play the content, as often as they wish, in an ad-free environment that safely insulates them from the World Wide Web. kidthing has established content relationships with some of the world’s leading children’s publishing, game and media companies, including Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Penguin Young Readers Group, Charlesbridge Publishing and many others.

“When we started Wee Sing, we wanted to share our favorite childhood songs with our children in a way that was fun and engaging for them. Today’s kids are the digital generation and we are excited to be able to bring treasured Wee Sing songs to them in the safe digital world of kidthing,” commented Susan Nipp, co-founder of Wee Sing.

“Wee Sing has entertained and educated millions of kids through music on videos, CDs and DVDs. We are honored to be able to debut this incredible work for the first time digitally and downloadable at kidthing,” said Don Levy, kidthing’s President, Strategic Business. "

Having the Wee Sing content will broaden the spectrum of what is available on the player for special needs students to access in the classroom and at home. Using a switch interface and switch to access the player, orthopedically impaired students will be able to turn pages and have the player read books to them for smoe much-needed independence. Depending on how the controls are set up on the player for playing videos, the students should be able to play and stop a preselected music video.

An interesting side-note:

I have to share that in my younger years, one of the Wee Sing co-founders, Susan Nipp, was teaching piano in my Oregon hometown of Newberg. I took piano lessons from her for a year or so. Later in college life and beyond I recorded several albums of my own material at a local recording studio and at that time a producer and the studio owner -friend of mine were selected to produce the initial cassettes for Wee Sing (see history link on Wee Sing site also printed below.)

"Two years and 20,000 copies later, their book was acquired by Price Stern Sloan, a publisher now an imprint of Penguin Group, USA. Realizing the need to create more product that promised wholesome, educational fun, Pam and Susan continued to develop new titles. In 1981, they broke new ground in children’s publishing with the addition of audiocassettes to their established songbook collection. Barry Hagen and Mauri Macy of Early Bird Recordings in Newberg, Oregon, were selected to produce the music. After creating more than 40 audio products, Pam and Susan still work closely with Barry and Mauri. "

I doubt that Susan would remember me, but I have kept track of their successes through the years and have enjoyed the little connection I have to them through the past. It has been fun to see it come full circle today with this post.

I would recommend checking out the kidthing free player download and trying the sample content included.

All the best to you!

Lon