I'm usually to be found on the teachers forum, but thought this was probably the best place to ask this question.

My son and daughter-in-law (who live in Norway) are expecting twins in the Spring - my first grandchildren!! - and I've been asked if I can find some suitable CDs of music for babies, preferably of classical music. I've heard about Mozart for Babies and the Classic FM CDs for babies, but when I did an internet search, so many CDs came up that I had no idea which would be worth getting.

Any recommendations, folks?

I would highly recommend Baby Einstein, my youngest has used these form day one he is now 3 ½ and still loves them, he listens to the CDs at night when going to sleep and loves to watch the DVD, when we are out he often recognises the music and will jump about telling which CD or DVD its form. Also for todlers children a CD called Hush by YoYo Ma and Bobby McFerrin.

Hope this helps.

baby Einstein

I think separate discs of "music for babies" or "music for toddlers" or "music for harassed mums" , "music for people with hard-to-manage hair" etc etc is a marketing opportunity more than anything else. The best type of music for unborn babies is surely whatever makes their mother happy. Once they arrive they will make their own preferences known in the usual manner.

To be honest, all the stuff marketed at babies and kids drove me witless: my two heard whatever we were listening to when they were very tiny, and listened, or not, as the mood took them. I understand that the company issuing the Baby Einstein series were put into a bit of a quandary recently when research demonstrated no particular benefit to babies (in terms of development) of hearing their products.

Babies will respond to whatever they're comfortable with - remember that they will have been able to hear in utero too, so if their mothers were serene listening to Black Sabbath when pregnant, then they are likely to respond well to that - for those whose parents heard folk, or jazz, or bagpipe music instead, similar would apply. One of my two risked being ostracised by his contemporaries by asking for Bach in the car as a three year old....nowadays both have developed their own tastes, which are not the same as ours, but we're just delighted that they are interested in music of any kind.

My daughter in particular responded well to classical music which we would switch on in the middle of the night to stop her wailing (having suitably fed her etc) and showed a special interest in a TV programme I used to watch in the evenings before she was born. So I think there's something in it, although I'm not sure it is of particular benefit to the child.

My nephew used to fall asleep to Chas'n'Dave singing Rabbit, so there's no accounting for tastes.

Perhaps best to buy a sort of selection CD with a whole range of music, or maybe several different styles, like classical, heavy rock (!) etc to see which is effective.

To explain a bit more - both my son and daughter-in-law are professional musicians and are involved in playing/singing in quite a few different styles of music. My daughter-in-law is Norwegian and she is keen that the babies have a bi-lingual upbringing, so she likes the idea of my son singing to them (both before and after they're born) in English, and she's asked me if there are any English fairy stories/nursery rhymes set to classical music on CD. I had heard that Mozart for Babies was very popular and wondered if anyone knew of anything else.

This answers the nursery rhyme bit of your question, rather than the classical music one. My daughters have grown up in France and been entirely educated in French schools but (judging from some of the posts on here) they probably know far more nursery rhymes than a lot of children who are growing up in England. I did play nursery rhymes on the piano and sing to them but what they really learned them from was video tapes of the Tweenies that my mother made for them. I also bought quite a few cassette tapes of nursery rhymes and children's songs from the Early Learning Centre, which they have also enjoyed listening to and singing along to.

Slightly off topic but I think story tapes (or CDs these days) are very useful if you are bringing children up billingually - the children get to listen to a lot of different voices (ie not just my female voice) and a wider range of vocabulary then they would get in everyday conversation. You can get stories "read straight" (ie unabridged) but also versions which are like radio plays with and without music. Charity shops are an excellent source of cheap story tapes/CDs.

Not quite what you were asking, jenny, but Lucinda Geoghegan's 'Singing Games and Rhymes for Tiny Tots' has lots of traditional songs and rhymes that your son and daughter-in-law might be interested in using...there is an accompanying CD, really for helping people who don't read music to learn the material, but I guess you could use it as a purely 'listening' CD too.

You can never go wrong singing some good ol' David Bowie to babies - that's what I'm going to do when I'm prepared to have kids, get them educated on the exciting adventures of Major Tom and Ziggy Stardust Aside from that, I'm sure that music like Chopin (the Nocturnes in particular, though maybe you want to avoid the obvious?), obviously some Mozart or anything else that is soothing would be good. But, as said above, it's probably whatever makes the mother relaxed! As I have never been a mother - and do not plan to for some time yet! - I couldn't say for sure...