Early years music specialist Kate worked with the funded twos from April – December 2014 at Riverside Nursery in North Shields, in the North East of England. This project has now come to an end.

Our aim was to support the children’s communication skills and well-being through creative music-making and movement play.

About the song

As part of the Terrific Twos at Riverside, we worked with a speech and language therapist called Lesley Forrester. She wrote this song for us.

In this song we are helping our children to learn how to stop, and shift their attention, which is a crucial skill for a developing two year old.

It might sometimes seem like your toddler is completely ignoring you on purpose when you ask them to do something. Sometimes, their brain is too busy and engrossed in what they are doing right now to even notice what you are saying. They cannot help this.

This skill of stopping what they are doing, and shifting attention is a skill which needs lots of practice for a two year old. This skill might even stop your child from running out into the road.

You might like to make some traffic lights at home so you have a visual prompt. We have been moving our arms slowly as we practice getting ready to go, then moving around when it is on a green light. The stopping is the hardest part, and deserves lots of praise when it is achieved.

We practised using this song at nursery any time we had to wait, like when we had our coats on ready to go outside, or were sitting waiting for our friends to join us on the carpet.

Listen and download

Download this song to your computer (‘right-click’ and choose ‘save file/link as’)

Words:

The yellow traffic light says get ready to go, get ready to go, get ready to go
The yellow traffic light says get ready to go, til the green light says move on

Move on, move on, move on, move on.

The green traffic light says you’ve got to move on, til the red traffic light says STOP!