The relative age of your baby or toddler will have a direct influence over your choice of what instrument you decide to buy. Young babies up to around one year old can do little more than grasp hold of a rattle type instrument and incessantly shake.
If the rattle can produce musical as well as rhythmical sounds then this may produce a more intense reaction from the child. They will slowly learn to associate shaking movement with the production of musical tones and rhythmical patterns.
To most parents this will merely be incessant noise, but nevertheless the child is actually starting the logical process of developing a correlation between rhythm and tones and therefore should be encouraged to continue with this process.
