Ok, I admit it, a huge motivation for me to drive 30 minutes and pay close to $40 on admission for our local Children’s Museum is because they have a dance room which plays nothing but Putumayo Kids albums. And even though said museum is a great playground for those that toddle, we spend most of our time movin’ to eclectic compilations as they come to life through surround sound speakers. Of course, trying to catch the moving lights on the floor and sparkles from the disco ball is fun too, but it’s all way more colorful when you are surrounded by world beats.

So, I am pleased to announce that Putumayo Kids is partnering up with LeapFrog and will release 4 of its award-winning full-length Playground CDs exclusively from LeapFrog’s App Center (http://www.leapfrog.com/en/appcenter.html) for Leapfrog’s LeapPad1 and the recently launched LeapPad2 and LeapsterGS.

Three of the four digital releases, European Playground, Jazz Playground and Cowboy Playground, are now available at the link above. The fourth upcoming release, World Sing-Along, includes two songs featuring Dan Zanes, as well as, Frances England’s “That’s What Friends Are For” (originally featured on the Many Hands: Family Music For Haiti release from Spare the Rock Records).  Children from Pihcintu Multicultural Children’s Choir, which features refugee girls mostly from war-torn regions, will sing “Around the World” to close the album. The release will be made available to the general public on October 30th and through the LeapFrog App Center on November 6th.  You can enjoy a free preview the album through the Bandcamp widget below.

Putumayo World Music will contribute $5,000 from sales of World Sing-Along during the period October 2012 through October 2014 to Population Services Internation (PSI) in support of its Five & Alive® campaign to ensure that all children have a healthy start to life, no matter where they are born. For more information about PSI, please visit www.psi.org.

Putumayo is also pleased to offer its first photography calendar, Children of the World, featuring images of children from Africa, Asia and Latin America by renowned photographer Jon Kaplan. Ten percent of Putumayo’s sales of the calendar (available October 1^st), will be contributed to Seva (www.seva.org), a nonprofit organization which builds sustainable health programs that serve vulnerable populations around the world and help end preventable blindness, that has restored eyesight to more than 3 million people.