How can I learn to sing and make music in tune? - Lesson

Learning to sing and make music in tune can be an enjoyable and educational journey for children, incorporating storytelling and interactive activities. One effective method is to use familiar stories with repetitive phrases, such as 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' and 'The Gruffalo'. Teachers encourage children to join in with these stories until they are confident with the repetition, which helps them to recognise and match sounds. A 'sound hunt' can further enhance this skill, where children explore different sounds by tapping or banging objects outside, focusing on various qualities like loud, quiet, high, and low sounds, all while following the rhythm of the story.

To develop the ability to echo sounds and music, children can engage in echo games. An adult or leader says a line from a story, and the children repeat it back, matching the rhythm and dynamics of the original. This can be visually reinforced by the leader pointing to themselves and then to the children to indicate turns. Call-and-respond games, such as 'Doggie, Doggie', where the children sit in a circle and interact with the 'doggie' in the middle, can also be a fun way to practice echoing and responding to music. Progressing from these games, children can be challenged to listen to new songs and repeat parts of them, gradually increasing the length of the phrases they echo. Finally, children can practice singing familiar songs from memory, both as a group and individually, to reinforce their ability to remember and reproduce melodies and lyrics accurately.