Annabelle rockin to her favorite Pandora station.

Like most things in life the advice of a good friend led to an amazing discovery. When we moved from Tulsa in 2006, my friend Rebecca recommended that I check out a website that allowed a person to listen to music for free with limited commercials. At the time I wasn’t too interested in music that I didn’t already know. I had my CDs and NPR to keep me happy.

When my daughter was a baby we mainly listened to NPR. Let’s be honest,  though: it put her to sleep. Aaron listened to hip hop and claimed that Annabelle loved it. When she got old enough to start reciting some of the lyrics I said that was enough hip hop, too, and decided something needed to change.

That’s when I took Rebecca’s advice and checked out Pandora. Pandora is an internet radio that allows you to make your own stations–as many as you want. Of course they want you to buy the music they help you find, but you don’t have to buy anything. Apart from a 30-second commercial every four or five songs, the music is free.

My Advice for Using Pandora with Kids

I really recommend starting a station for your kids. If you have more than one child, you may want to start a station for each child, or you could have multiple stations for different types of music like one for lullabies, one for kids’ worship, and one for music from your child’s favorite TV shows or movies.

To start a station, click the Create a New Station button. Type in an artist’s name or a song that you may have heard your child sing. Or you can choose Find a Genre Station. The more suggestions you give for an individual station, the better the station will be at guessing what your little one wants to hear.

After you’ve made a station, listen to the music Pandora chooses. If you like a song, press the thumbs up button and it will keep playing music similar to that song. If you don’t like one, press the thumbs down button and it will not suggest music like that anymore. Some unwanted songs may creep up sometimes, but just thumbs down it and Pandora will skip to something else.

If you need help getting started figuring out what kind of music to look for, go to iTunes and search the children’s music there. At iTunes you will have access to a huge selection of music and you can preview a few seconds of each song. Unfortunately not all music on Pandora is available on iTunes yet.

My Favorite Music (for the kids) on Pandora

I’ve been doing all that for six months now, and I’ve developed some wonderful stations for my kids. I’ve also encountered tons of new artists I never would have run into without Pandora. Here are some of my favorites from the kids’ stations:

• Yo Gabba Gabba!
• Sesame Street
• Justin Roberts
• Renee and Jeremy
• Frances England
• The Laurie Berkner Band
• Robert Bobert and the Bubble Machine
• They Might Be Giants
• Bare Naked Ladies

And so many more!

Sharing Your Stations

After you’ve made stations for your kids you will want to sing the praises of Pandora. Pandora has thought of that, too. When you’re playing a station you will see a button called options. Press options and then pick share this station with a friend. You can put in an email address and write a message explaining how great your station is.

You can also check out what your friends are listening to. Click on check it out under Friends’ Music. This will take you to a list of people you know who also listen to Pandora. You can view their most recent songs and see what their favorite artists and songs are. If you like what you see, click on the song and it will create a new station on your profile.

There are so many options on this website that bringing good music to your kids has never been easier. I highly recommend taking Pandora with you on your phone. We listen at home and in the car. It’s great on trips. It could be fun for your family to create a station for a certain trip. Make it a project for the whole family.