Sing with children, even if you’re bad at it

If you’ve ever felt like you’re bad at singing, this next song’s for you.

Lots of us grew up with the idea that we’re bad at singing. As adults, we’re shy about it. You might feel like you shouldn’t sing, or that you should at least give a disclaimer beforehand. And if that’s the case, it can be frustrating to read blog articles about how great singing is for children’s brain development, or how it helps them handle daily transitions. 

What use is that knowledge if you don’t feel comfortable singing in the first place?

The good news is, all of us can sing. Embracing that just requires you to see that there’s a lot more to singing than delivering Beyoncé-level vocals. 

Luckily, there’s no better place to do that than a room full of toddlers.

Zoë Challenor, the founder and director of B’Opera, directs singing workshops for babies, toddlers and educators. As a classically-trained vocalist, she’s got years of experience performing for both grown-ups and young children. She says babies are the better audience.

“They’re so much nicer than adults,” she laughs. “The Early Years is not a judgmental age group. There’s just something so lovely about singing to an audience that is truly listening, without any notion of judgment and criticism.”

So how can we take a page from children’s songbooks, and learn to sing without apology? How can we quit worrying about whether we’re good at singing, and just focus on how to have fun with it?

That starts with thinking about singing as play, not performance.

Who said we’ve got to be ‘good’ at singing, anyway?

By the standards of the Cambridge Opera Journal, most three-year-olds aren’t ‘good’ singers. But they’re probably having more fun singing than any adult in the room. 

In that sense, children have a more open-minded understanding of singing than most grown-ups. They see singing as a form of play, removed from any self-criticism or second-guessing. If we can follow their example, it’s easier to shed our own reservations about our singing voices.

“Stop thinking about singing as a way to make music, and instead think about it as a way to build community. Singing creates fun, joyful interactions, in a playful way that children appreciate,” explains Dr. Wendy Sims, who studies singing in early education at the University of Missouri School of Music.

For a grown-up, real-world example of how this works, you could look at chants at a sports stadium. Nobody’s too concerned about delivering a sparkling choral performance there. Instead, it’s clear that the shared experience, that sense of togetherness, is the point of singing.

Early education is the perfect environment to rethink your relationship to singing. We’ve just got to follow children’s example, in their willingness to experiment with song, and enjoy the shared experience that comes from that. Professor Graham Welch, Chair of Music Education at University College London, says this element of playfulness is essential.

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Learning to play with your voice

Unlearning a lifetime of sing-shyness takes time. But if you’d like to take some baby steps, it’s helpful to just play with your voice. 

For starters, it’s best to just get comfortable with different ways to project our voice, and to share that with others. You don’t have to worry about whether you’re good at singing or not — just that you’re trying something new.

You can try these activities yourself, but they’re also great to do as a group with children. 

• Make some sound effects. What sound does a cow make? What about the wind in the trees? What about a really, really loud cow? Storytime is a perfect opportunity to play around with these sounds.
• Trace a line with your voice. Draw a wiggly line on a sheet of paper, and follow the line with your finger, raising the pitch of your voice up and down with the rise and fall of your line. You could also spell your name with your finger, and use the pitch or volume of your voice to match the motion of your finger. 
• Say a sentence in five different ways, or a word in ten different ways. Play around with your tone, your pitch, or which syllables you emphasize. You can go around in a circle and take turns as a class. If it devolves into silliness, good! That’s fun, and there’s no wrong way to sing.
• Say a word looooonger, Louder! or quieter than usual. We use our voices expressively all the time anyway — where’s the boundary between singing and fancy talk?  You might take turns doing this with a vocabulary word of the week, or with your names.
• Get to know your face muscles. Do a big yawn like a lion, or scrunch your face up teeny like a mouse! Then, give your jaw and cheek muscles a little massage. Playing with our facial muscles and expressions is a great way to warm up for singing, and an easy opportunity to make noises along the way.

‍Best practices for singing with children

If you’re just starting out with bringing singing into your classroom, you may as well pick up a couple good habits from the get-go. Here are three tips to keep in mind as you start singing with children:

1. Don’t say you’re bad at singing. Children learn what we model for them, whether or not we intend to teach it. If you say you’re not a good singer, or act shy and apologetic about singing, children will learn that it’s something to be insecure about. Remember, children don’t care how you’re singing — what’s important is that you’re sharing the experience together.
2. Explore songs from children’s home cultures. You could reach out to parents to ask for simple songs to try, or to share an example of how communities use song in different cultures. Not only does this help form stronger bonds with families, but it also gives you a bigger library of songs and musical traditions that reflect the children in your care.
3. Think of singing as a teaching tool, not a performance. As Zoë Challenor explains, “it’s not about what you sing, but the intention behind your singing. What feeling, or what experience, do you want to give to children through song? That might be love, soothing, or a sense of togetherness,” she says. “With young children, they’re not thinking about whether you’re ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ It just matters that you’re trying.”