Teaching kids how to sing is very different than teaching teenagers or adults. Here’s a few pointers on how to teach your children how to sing better:
- Make sure they enjoy the process. It is very important that the kids have positive associations to singing: It will often determine whether they continue singing into their adulthood or not.
- Kids have a short attention span, so switch songs up and make it interactive. When I’m teaching children, I often use visual aids, I include dancing. When I do warm-up exercises, I present them as fun games, competitions etc. Be creative and introduce new things. involve the kids and listen to their opinion or taste. The children end up loving what they do!
- Give plenty of positive feedback and build their confidence.
- A big part of teaching children how to sing better is for them to develop their musical ear. This will automatically happen with kids singing lessons or with plenty of singing with other adults, but also make sure you expose your kids to plenty of music. You can also incorporate fun listening exercises. An example would be when I play a simple. short run on the piano, and they have to sing what they just heard.
- When the kids are small, they usually love interactive songs like ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’. As soon as they hit about 7, most kids think that’s for ‘babies’ and they prefer to sing pop songs. There’s plenty of ‘clean songs’ with positive messages for them. Check out the link http://everyonecansing.com.au/list-of-songs for ideas.
- Kids love to sing in front of the microphone, so if you have a budget, that is a good investment! It doesn’t have to be top notch quality, as long as it functions and looks and sounds like the ‘real deal’ to them.
- Youtube has plenty of great karaoke songs to sing along to. Check it out by clicking here
Enjoy singing with your child! It is certainly worth the investment.
For any further questions or to book a lesson for your child, email: vocal@everyonecansing.com.au