Singing is my daughter’s happy noise.  Long before she could talk, she was babbling to herself in a singsong voice.  She starred in her first solo at church when she was five years old and stole the show, if I do say so myself.  When it was time to learn her multiplication tables, she made up her own songs and rhymes.  Singing is just in her nature and it’s something she does without even thinking about it.  When I was asked to review the DittyBop app I knew it would be a gold record hit for her.

First of all, this app is free.  Just search for DittyBop on the AppStore and install.  It helps if you have an iTunes gift card though, because you’ll want to get some of the songs so you’ll know how to sing them.  You don’t have to spend a penny, though, as long as you have an idea of how some of the songs go.

To get started, you need to choose your Ditty Bopper. There are four available.  I loved the little cowboy country singer but my daughter wouldn’t go for it.  Bopalicious is much more her style!   It cracked me up that the Ditty Boppers even have their own Facebook pages.

Next, you have the option of music genres.  There are so many to choose from — some of the options are very basic (“kids”) while some are musician-specific (Justin Bieber, anyone?)

There are so many more choices than pictured above.  Next you need to choose your song.  At this point, you have the option to download the songs on iTunes (which is worth doing)   If my daughter had some tweens over and wanted to play this game, it would be worth it to me to download a few of the songs for them.  It’s really fun and it’s so affordable to get a song or two on iTunes anyway.  If you already have songs on your device, you might be able to just use them?  I’m not sure.  We didn’t have any songs downloaded on the iPad yet, so I couldn’t test out that theory.  We chose a few songs that we already knew and went from there.   The basis of this game is to make music without words.  So you can hum, whistle, tap, beatbox, or whatever…just don’t sing any words.  After recording the song, you send it to a friend to see if they can guess what song you just performed.   My kids had just as much fun listening to their own recordings as they did with the idea of sending it to a friend.  The more you play and the better you get, you can get points and trophies.  We aren’t that good yet, but it’s a goal to reach!

As you can see, there are lots of choices for everyone.   I just LOVE that my entire family can enjoy this app together.  I can see us spending lots of time playing this.  It’s hilarious to hear each other humming the tune then trying to guess it!  This would be so fun to play when you have a lot of people over at a party.  If you travel out of town, why not download this app and play it with your kids while you’re gone?  What a fun way to connect instead of the regular “how was your day?” phone call.  This would also be fun to do with the grandparents or any loved one who lives far away.  Let the long-distance cousins play a round on a weekend or let your kids play in separate rooms, sending their Ditty Bops to each other.   Moment of peace for mom, tons of fun for the kids.  Sounds like a win, win to me!!   DittyBop is FREE for a limited time, so snag it while you can!

Like DittyBop on Facebook and follow on Twitter.   Which DittyBopper would you choose?