A few days ago, I had the opportunity to be interviewed on the radio about Petit Folks. The program aired on a Sunday morning while we were at home. My little ones couldn’t believe that mom was on the radio talking about something they know so well.
Aside from the lovely interview, there was something else that moved me deeply. It was watching their reaction every time a Petit Folks song played during the interview. They started dancing like crazy! Jumping and moving all around the house. Although they’re used to dancing when we play, that spontaneity upon hearing the music from an external source reminded me why I created this project. Music has that magical power to bring us together and to let us enjoy family moments.
In the interview, I talked about how Petit Folks was born, the spark that led me to reinvent the traditional children’s songbook, and the excitement with which I created each of the accompanying resources: the songs, the illustrations, the activities… all designed so you can enjoy moments of play, music, and connection with your little ones.
One of the most beautiful aspects of children’s music is that it not only entertains but also has a profound impact on the development of our children. Through songs, they can improve their language, strengthen their motor skills, learn to manage their emotions, and, most importantly, create those essential emotional bonds. This is precisely what I aim to convey with Petit Folks: that music is the key to unlocking magical moments, whether at home or in the classroom.
If you’d like to learn a little more about the project, its origins, and the wonderful people behind the music, I invite you to listen to the full interview I did with Ester Plana for the Set de Sons program on Catalunya Música here.
RIGHT BELOW THESE LINES, YOU CAN READ THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE INTERVIEW IN ENGLISH.
You’ll understand why, for me, Petit Folks is much more than songs and learning: it’s a way of creating unforgettable memories and experiences with our little ones.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION:
E.P. Today we will get to know a game where traditional songs are the foundation and inspiration for spending hours and hours of family time together, discovering, imagining, bonding, learning, and so much more. It’s called Petit Folks, and its creator, Marta Bellavista, is here to present it.
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Off-screen: Play and share music. Set de sons. With Esther Plana.
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E.P. Having a child changes your life in many ways. Some things you can predict. You know you’ll be changing diapers, for instance, or that you’ll be up at night taking care of your child’s sleep. But what you never imagine is the transformative power that becoming a mother or father brings. For our guest today, motherhood even led her to change careers and become an entrepreneur. And it all began while playing with her daughter. Marta Bellavista, welcome to Sounds Set.
M.B. Hello, Esther. Thank you.
E.P. Did you expect motherhood to change your life so much?
M.B. No, honestly, I didn’t. I wasn’t one of those people who absolutely wanted to be a mom, not at all. So, I think that motherhood, even if you want it very much, still catches you off guard.
E.P. And then you do what you can.
M.B. Exactly, yes. First, you just do what you can, and in the end, you manage. But it changes many things. It changes the way you see things, it changes who you are, and it also brings you many new things and points of view that, without being a mother or father, you probably wouldn’t have.
E.P. Let’s go step-by-step and explain a bit where it all began.
E.P. Before having your first daughter, you worked in marketing and advertising, also in tech projects. And then one day, from a need to spend time playing with your daughter, an idea emerged.
M.B. Yes. My daughter, apart from being a child who started speaking early, picking up words and vocabulary, is a child who loves to sing and really loves songs. So she would come home from preschool singing lots of songs that I didn’t recognize, and since we’re talking about a child who was barely more than a year old, she couldn’t communicate to me what songs they were working on at school. And she wasn’t always able to perform them perfectly so that I could understand which songs they were. Even later, when she started what would now be called “Year 1.”
E.P. When she was one year old, that is.
M.B. Yes, when she started Year 1, she began learning English at preschool. So, she would also come home singing songs in English. In a way, I wanted to continue this learning at home. So, I looked for tools that would allow me to do that, to find some kind of game that could bring traditional children’s songs within her reach.
M.B. After all, traditional children's songs are widely used in preschools and early childhood education, even in primary schools, to help with language development, motor skills, emotional bonding, socialization, and so on.
M.B. I couldn’t find a tool that would allow us to do this at home or that could standardize it somehow.
E.P. Everything led you back to screens, right?
M.B. Everything led me to screens, exactly. In the end, the easy solution, and one that everyone has at hand, is to grab a phone and look for a video.
E.P. Of course.
M.B. But we’re talking about an age where screen time isn’t recommended. So, from there, I kept thinking it over until I decided to make some very simple cards with a picture on one side and the song lyrics on the other. I laminated them and put them in a box.
M.B. And I was surprised by how popular it was at home. We’re talking about a child who was under a year and a half old, and every afternoon she wanted to spread all the cards out on the floor. She would hand them to me… She began to recognize each song, and she would decide which songs we would sing. Even my mother would come over and say, “Wow, she always wants to play with this.”
E.P. Total success.
M.B. Total success. The picture allowed her to recognize the song and tell me, “I want to play with this song.”
E.P. Right. And for you to sing it to her.
M.B. The lyrics allow the adult to read the song and sing it, but often, we don’t know the song. Even though we’re talking about traditional children’s songs in our own language, we don’t know all of them. Plus, these songs are something that’s gradually being lost.
M.B. So, what was missing was that musical component to accompany the game, while also trying to avoid anything involving a screen or phone.
M.B. So, from all this, my daughter kept playing with it, and then my second child came along during this process, and I kept thinking about it because I saw it had great potential. Over time, and I suppose thanks to my entrepreneurial spirit, I started thinking about how I could turn this simple box into a resource, a product that could bring this idea to both schools and families.
E.P. How did you choose the first songs? Were they the songs your daughter was singing after coming home from preschool, or...?
M.B. The selection of songs for Petit Folks was probably the longest process of all, before launching the game.
M.B. Because, in the end, I’ve always been very clear that I wanted this game to be available in Catalan, but also in Spanish and English. Those are the languages that are familiar to me, and my daughter, in this case, had experienced learning in Catalan and had started incorporating English from preschool. I wanted the three languages to be included.
M.B. So, to make this selection, what I had to do, or the process I went through, was reviewing all the traditional children's songs in all three languages. We’re talking about hundreds of them.
E.P. Right.
M.B. So, I’ve always been very clear that if Petit Folks ended up being a product that went to market, it needed to have certain values. For me, the traditional children’s songs included in Petit Folks have gone through a filter, trying to avoid gender stereotypes, which are common in traditional children’s songs, trying to avoid violence, and trying to avoid any political or religious thoughts. I wanted them to be as "pure" as possible, even though they are children’s songs from oral tradition, and many of them come from a historical moment that, I know, often has a very non-childish undertone. So, leaving aside the background, which is there but isn’t transmitted through the song, what I did was classify all the songs, going through a historical review process of all the children’s songs in the three languages.
M.B. So, when I had this map of songs, I tried to classify them. That’s why Petit Folks has the “Animal World” box, where all the songs are about animals, and the “Play and Move” box, where all the songs work on movement, body awareness, psychomotor skills, etc.
M.B. But the idea is that, in the future, there will be four more boxes.
E.P. Why did you start with animals and play and move? Maybe because those are the most common themes, or...?
M.B. The game is designed for the 1-6 year age range, for early childhood. So, animals, especially in the first years of that range, really excite kids. And many traditional children’s songs have animals. So, for me, it was a bit about starting with these travel companions. Starting by creating these characters that are seen in the illustrations and that repeat in the different boxes. And the “Animal World” box allowed me to get started in this visual world, and later, more characters will be added to the other boxes, but you have a basic set of these…
E.P. They stay the same, right?
M.B. In the end, Petit Folks doesn’t just talk about early childhood. Petit refers to childhood, and Folks refers to traditional music but also to friendship. For me, the idea behind Folks is these travel companions who accompany children in their learning from ages 1 to 6 through music and songs.
E.P. Let’s explain a bit about what these boxes are like.
M.B. They are wooden boxes.
E.P. I think that’s important too. You took that into account when creating them. They are wooden boxes, and inside each box, there are also little wooden cards. On one side, there’s the illustration, and on the other side, there’s the traditional song. And I think all the illustrations even come together to form a puzzle, which is great because it allows for many types of play with the box.
M.B. The game is made of wood because of the values I mentioned earlier. For me, it’s important... Not all games can be made of wood, of course, but wood has a sensory quality, a presence, a weight that I think works very well and is an element for children. For me, it was important that it was wood and that it was locally produced. In the end, if you have values of sustainability, you can’t go to the other side of the world to produce them.
M.B. So, the boxes are made of wood, and there’s a wooden lid that cannot be removed because lids tend to get lost. The lid invites discovery—it encourages children to open the box.
E.P. What’s inside?
M.B. Inside, there are 16 illustrated wooden cards. Each illustration represents the song on that card, and on the other side is the title and the lyrics so the adult can read and sing it.
M.B. You could even think that, as they approach the age of 6, they can start reading. The title is in block letters, and the lyrics are in cursive.
M.B. The game is recommended for ages 1 to 6. At around the age of one, or one and a half, children will open and close the lid, and put in and take out cards. They love it. It’s the texture, the sound, and everything we talked about earlier with the wood. And this is when the child gradually realizes that if they give you a card, you’ll sing it. They start to make the connection, or that when they open the box, you pick a card and sing it. And suddenly, they realize there’s a connection. This magical connection is created in which they know that if they give you a card or open the box, if they ask you to sing for them, you’ll sing, you’ll look at them, you’ll pamper them, and you’ll have a unique bonding moment.
E.P. How important that is, because sometimes we all have what we have, and it’s hard to find these moments to play with our children with quality. To be present. And with Petit Folks, you’re present, and the child notices that.
M.B. Yes, you’re present. I also have to say that sometimes people tell me, "But you have to play with it for a long time."
M.B. I understand that we don’t always have the time or energy to dedicate half an hour or an hour to playing every afternoon. Petit Folks allows you to sit down on the floor, start taking out the cards, sing them all, play the music, or even assemble the puzzle you mentioned before. It lets you do that, but it also lets you incorporate it into daily routines.
M.B. For example, now I don’t do this anymore because I’ve stopped changing him on the changing table, but when my son was still being changed, he was a very active, very nervous child. What Petit Folks allowed me to do was give him a card, and the mere illustration would grab his attention and help him focus. Then, I would sing the song. And by singing it, he would start to sing along, respond to me, say things to me while I was changing him.
M.B. "Let’s sing a song!" I’d give him a card: "Not this one, not this one," and he would look at me like, "Oh!" And maybe there were three days when we sang the same song 20 times, and other days, we’d sing them all.
E.P. You couldn’t stop, of course.
M.B. So, between coming back from school and dinner—those moments when sometimes they come back from school feeling nervous because they’ve lost that connection, maybe something happened that they can’t express—the act of sitting down together really calms them, and they appreciate it a lot.
E.P. Do you recommend a particular box to start with, or does it not matter?
M.B. The game is designed as an evolving game because children will play it in different ways, choosing different songs according to their developmental stage. Even the way they use the cards, like assembling the puzzle formed by the 16 cards, is something they can’t do on their own until they are three or four years old unless you help them.
M.B. For example, I sing the songs for them so they know which one comes next, etc.
M.B. So, it’s designed as an evolving game. There’s really no box that’s better for one moment or another.
M.B. It’s true that the Animal World box might be a bit calmer. Calmer in the sense that these songs may not have as much dancing or movement as the Play and Move box, which is designed more for body awareness. This doesn’t mean that one box is more suitable for a certain age than the other, but sometimes, if someone tells me their child is one year old, I might recommend starting with the Animal World box.
M.B. Play and Move, on the other hand, has a lot more movement. It’s true that Play and Move includes lap games, and a lap game can be done with a one-year-old but also with a four-year-old. There are hand games too.
M.B. So, the type of songs cover this entire age range.
E.P. Having experienced it firsthand, what benefits would you say you value the most about Petit Folks? Because I’m sure you’ve seen many, and we’ve already mentioned a few.
M.B. I’d say that what moved me the most at the beginning was speech and language. In the end, it helps to incorporate new vocabulary, more complex structures, pronunciation, and intonation. For me, that’s the first benefit, and it can be in your native language or in a second language.
M.B. It’s like I learned along the way—because Petit Folks has a lot of research behind it. I’m not a pedagogue, I’m not a musician, so I’ve had to do a lot of research on the benefits of songs, music, and childhood development, etc.
M.B. So, beyond speech and cognitive development, it’s a game that’s really good for working on the psychomotor side, movement, coordination, balance...
M.B. Also, the emotional bond, the work on emotions... because some of the songs, but also in general, music, physical contact, being looked at, being pampered—all of this is creating children with better self-esteem, more security, and emotional well-being.
M.B. And then there’s the whole socialization aspect too. When it’s played in a group, especially in classrooms, it allows you to create many dynamics between different children. Music, in the end, puts us all on the same level and allows everyone to participate in the same way.
M.B. And finally, there’s the whole creativity and originality side.
M.B. A funny anecdote: my son, for example, loves the song "Ipui ia!" which, in the case of Petit Folks, we’ve adapted so that all the verses talk about transportation and their onomatopoeias. Now, think about it—he’s a little over two years old—and he’s decided to change one of the verses: “If you go by sailboat.” I guess this is because we just spent a few days at the beach. He’s never been on a sailboat, my son.
E.P. And he saw one passing by.
M.B. Exactly. "If you go by sailboat." And these are moments when you realize that not only can he say it, but he’s also understood the meaning of the song. He knows that in this song, you can go by bike, by car... and he decided, based on his own experience of seeing a sailboat pass by—even though he hasn’t been on one—that he wanted to create a new verse. “If you go by sailboat,” and he even made up a sound for it... which we don’t all agree with, and we’ll have to come up with a different one.
M.B. But it helps him with comprehension and also with creativity and originality.
E.P. Speaking of the boxes, the boxes are associated with an app, which can be very helpful when playing with our children. Tell me a bit about what’s in this app because it seems like it’s where we can listen to the versions you’ve made.
M.B. The Petit Folks app is essential for me. On one hand, because we don't all know every song. So, for me, it was essential that the mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, or anyone who wanted to play with the child, had a resource where they could play this music. For themselves, to be able to know what a song is like, and also because sometimes you can either sing the song or just listen to it. In the end, listening is also an important part of learning. Being able to pay attention, to listen to something.
M.B. So, the first thing is the space where the music is. The music that I was very clear about wanting to align with the values of Petit Folks.
M.B. Then, in the app, there are 96 songs. Because we're talking about two boxes in Catalan, two in Spanish, two in English. Each with 16 cards.
M.B. So, in the app, there are the 96 songs we produced for the game. These 96 songs are actually available for free access through the app. There's a radio space where you can listen to them all randomly for free.
M.B. Inside this private space, in addition to the music, where you can select the song you want, there is the historical or explanatory part, the context of each song (when context is available, because not all songs have information). There are activity ideas to play, to work on all these different learnings, and then there is a space with materials, with resources: puppets to cut out, finger puppets, drawings to color, characters to paint... with the idea of reinforcing this learning.
M.B. In the end, if you want to work through the song about lions, you can cut out the lion, you can teach the lion...
M.B. For example, the song "Tenia un gall" (I Had a Rooster): what this song allows is to have the different animals, and with a group of different children, each one can have an animal. Looking for dynamics that work on comprehension, attention, and also this speaking part.
E.P. We're talking about speech learning, about playing, but it's a really good way to introduce children to music, and it's the most natural way. Singing it first with our own voice, from the emotional connection, and then expanding. They transmit a lot of joy, and it seems you've arranged it as neo-folk, but with very modern arrangements.
M.B. In fact, I always say that with music, I think I'm in the best hands. We call it indie neo-folk, but really, anyone who listens to all the songs will see that it incorporates many different styles. In the end, it's about working with music from this quality, but at the same time, trying to help children develop an appreciation for music through different instruments and styles. So, you'll find everything from more electronic songs, to rock, pop, or even some that, like Joan Petit – I always give this example, but I think I should change it – Joan Petit has a bit of a reggaeton vibe.
M.B. In the end, it's about transmitting to children this taste for music, this enjoyment of music, and this musical luxury that Petit Folks has is thanks to the musicians behind it: Violeta Tello Grau and Víctor Valiente Hernández. They are both excellent musicians. Violeta is a music education teacher in addition to being a singer and musician, and Víctor is a multi-instrumentalist, a producer, and has played with major bands in the Spanish music scene... I believe they have all the experience to bring this versatility, this colorful texture that Petit Folks' songs have.
E.P. We're talking a lot about this being aimed at families, but of course, this is also a fantastic resource for daycare centers and preschools. Do you know of any schools that are already applying it?
M.B. Yes, actually, part of my audience, let's say my clients, are schools. I think that in the case of schools, this game makes their job easier. It makes it easier because schools already work with traditional children's songs. They do this, and it's part of the program or method they use, both in nursery schools and the second cycle of preschool.
M.B. So, this is a tool that makes their job easier, that gathers everything together, the game that attracts the little ones, the illustrations, all the material in the app, the music.
M.B. Sometimes it happens that in a school, if they want to play a song, they have to resort to YouTube. And YouTube is visual, and it has ads. So, here you have everything at once, and each school can decide how deeply they want to engage with the way to play.
M.B. Some schools have created dynamics based on the game, some schools keep it more free, they place it there and children can access it whenever they want. Other schools incorporate it into transition moments, like before going out to play or to create a specific routine.
M.B. And there are also schools that use it for English. In the end, especially in the case of daycare centers, when you're working with English, you're not looking for them to speak in English. If a child doesn't have immersion in the language, it's very difficult for them to speak it. What you're looking for is for them to recognize it, to learn the sounds, the intonation, and they will know and recognize some words. But mainly, you're trying to create the habit, which will be good to have cultivated later on.
E.P. And so that what happened to you with your first daughter doesn't happen, when she went to daycare and came home singing songs you didn't know... Also, parents related to these schools that use Petit Folks, I think they can access the music, right?
M.B. Yes. Essentially, the game and the app go together and can't be separated. But we do offer schools the option that parents can purchase just access to the app. I understand that not all families want or can afford it, but the app is priced very reasonably.
M.B. So, if your school works with this material, then in some way, it gives you access to the music part, the songs, where you'll also find all the other resources.
E.P. Of course, and this is something that gets repeated at home many times. Finally, how old is your daughter now?
M.B. Four.
E.P. Does she still play with Petit Folks?
M.B. Yes.
E.P. Every day?
M.B. Almost. The truth is that sometimes when I talk about Petit Folks, people say, "Oh, but your children must play with it a lot because you made it." They don't know. Until recently, they didn't even know what Petit Folks was. I never told them what it was. I never explained to them that I made it. So, for them, it has always been a game that has been at home, not a game made by mom. In fact, they still don't understand because I haven't wanted to explain everything to them. What happens is they see me moving boxes up and down...
E.P. And why does mom bring so many games?
M.B. And they hear our friends talking about it, and then, by listening to conversations, my daughter, who is four years old, is starting to understand that I have something to do with it.
M.B. And they never knew that this was something I made. And still, it's something they play with a lot. There are days they use it, and there are days I use it. There are moments of anxiety, of nervousness, those afternoons when everything feels a bit upside down...
M.B. Exactly, yes.
M.B. When everything feels a bit too much. For example, I often use the moment when I say, "Okay, let's sit down and sing a song." And sometimes it's one or two songs, like I mentioned before. You don't have to play for half an hour or an hour straight. So, we keep using it.
M.B. They do everything with it. I've found them climbing on the boxes, I've found them making a line with all the cards to the end of the house. In the end, what's also important is that they can play freely.
E.P. Totally.
M.B. As they want. And it depends on the moment. And they don't always have to sing if they don't want to. The game has this texture, these types of materials that if they want to play in another way, they'll learn in a different way.
E.P. Absolutely. So, we've learned about this fantastic tool for introducing music, for speech learning, but also for fostering imagination, bonding, fine motor skills, gross motor skills—well, the benefits are countless. I'm sure all the children and families will get a lot out of it.
E.P. Thank you so much, Marta, for coming to tell us all about Petit Folks, and we hope there will be more boxes, more languages, and that it keeps growing.
M.B. Thank you!