Helping Children to Sing Correctly

Help Children to Sing Correctly

“You should help the children sing clearly and with a natural childlike tone quality.

1.       Posture, Good posture is the key to proper breathing and pleasing tone quality.  Children should sit or stand erectly.  If seated, they could move forward in their seats and sit with the upper body strait.

2.       Breathing. Controlled breathing can help children develop beautiful tone quality, sustain musical phrases, and sing in tune.

3.      Tone quality. Children should project a light, free, natural tone quality. Do not encourage them to sing with a loud forced, harsh tone that can cause vocal strain and distract from the spirit. 

4.      Help children start and stop together, enunciate the words together, pronounce the words uniformly, sing the melody accurately, sing with expression and watch and follow you.

Lyrical Misunderstanding: Recently one of the moms in our branch reported to me that the favorite song of her two daughters is "In the Leafy Treetops." "Oh", I said, "I have puppets for that song. I'll bring them and they can help me use the puppets to sing their favorite song." She then went on to tell me that her youngest daughter had finally admitted that she couldn't understand why all the flowers in the pretty garden were naughty. She was really bothered by that. If she, indeed, had a pretty garden, she was certain that her flowers would not be naughty. She was relieved by the explanation from her mom that the flowers were merely nodding in the wind.

We should give some thought to ways that we can help the children really understand what they are singing.

(I apologize I do not recall the source of this story.)

Teaching Children to Open their Mouths

Kids are visual learners

Helping them to realize the importance of opening their mouths. Open up for fullness and volume when they are singing.

Their voice is an instrument and the more they open their mouth the more volume there will be.

Use a rubber band to show them what it looks like when they open their mouths. Oh have a poster board with the shape cut out of how the mouth should be formed.

Use a megaphone…the larger end causes more volume to come out when we speak into the smaller end.  Turn it around and it automatically get quieter.

Use a tennis ball as a prop.

Vocal Exploration-

Have the children use different styles as singing.  This helps them learn about what they can do with their voices.