"Repeat After Me" Songs/Chants...What Age?

[SilverSabre25]

Songs/chants that have a call and response style (Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar? comes to mind) or a "repeat after me" style (Going on a Bear Hunt)...what age do you reasonably expect the kids to be able to do them? I would have expected my 3.5 yo to be able to, but she just giggles. None of the rest of my dcks even say ANYTHING when I'm trying to do one of these. Maybe I just haven't figured out yet how to teach that kind of thing?

[daycare]

I think that it depends on the child. I have some that are able to age 2.5 and some of my 3.5 cant. i would do it regardless of age and just sign it anyways. This is how I got them to do it. We also do a lot of army style chants on our way to the bathroom, or other activities and they will repeat after me with these....
ex: on the way to the bathroom I will say " soliders get in line, march two three four" then I will give a chant, something silly...."Billy really has to pee....(reapeat) to the bathroom before we get to 3, sound off.....They laugh and march all the way to where ever we go.... I think that a lot of them made the connection of repeat after me whenI intorduced the songs..

[WImom]

None of my kids repeat things with me (this is including our weather song, hello songs, wheels on the bus, etc. It drives me nuts. I have ages 2-4Y. I feel like I'm always singing circle time songs on my own. I remember when my own kids were in my daycare and even at 2y they sang along and then so did the rest of the kids.

They also look at me blankly when I ask open ended questions?

I will say the 2.5 year old boy I have here is the best at all of the above which surprises me since he's my youngest here.

I have three new kids starting soon and I hope atleast 2 of them like to sing along.

[ammama]

If you do the song over and over again, without pointing people out for not singing along, they will pick it up. My kids (ages 2-4 now, but i've been doing this with the same group over a year) all sing along with me at circle time, and are getting good at picking up new songs fast now. We sing the exact same 3 songs for opening every time, sing some of our favorites/seasonal type songs, and I try to only introduce 1 new song every few weeks.

Circle time is all of their favorite time of day.