If your little ones love to sing and you’ve been wondering about some ways to teach your kids to sing in tune at home, we have some great resources for parents to check out.

You might want to keep in mind that there are various opinions on when and if children should be taught to sing. Some professional voice teachers don’t like to introduce very young children to sing for fear of damaging their voices, while others think this theory is out of date, and it is fine to begin to teach children how to use their voice. However you feel about it, you can always check out some of the great online singing lessons, mp3s, DVDs, books, sites, and apps we found that can help children learn to sing and then make up your mind.

singingfeatured

Free Online Singing Lessons for Kids

There are some excellent free online singing lessons available at Kathie Hill Music. They are fun and easy for kids to watch and learn some proper techniques.

Or check out this short lesson on pitch from Kids Music Workshop.

Kids Vocal Lessons on CD or MP3

voicelessonstogo
Another option would be to try Voice Lessons To Go for Kids! It is the first volume of Ariella Vaccarino’s popular Voice Lessons To Go series designed for Kids. The volume begins with advice on healthy singing, including words on posture, breathing, and diction. Vocal warm-ups follow in patterns broken up into three separate vocalizes 1. singing numbers (123), 2. singing syllables (la), and 3. singing solfege (do re mi). Musical terms such as major scales, chords, octaves, staccato, and legato are sung through and explained.

Singing Lessons for Kids Course/DVD

  • If you are looking for a DVD course, check out Singing Made Easy. This program is designed to help beginners learn the proper way to sing. There is a “teaching point” for each song to help the singer learn the most essential things. The students can sing along with the voice tracks until they know the pieces and then with the accompaniment tracks only.
  • You could also try Teaching Kids to Sing DVD that can help you teach your children all the foundations from Posture, Breathing, Tone, Rhythm, Diction, and more. The cast includes Chris & Carole Beatty and a group of children ages 5 to 13. The CD contains all the music used on the two DVDs in two versions: With vocals and track only. This allows your young singers to learn and then perform the songs.

Books to help kids learn to sing

  • Songs Children Can Sing has the lyrics, melody, and chord symbols for eight songs (Getting to Know You /Happy Talk/ I Whistle a Happy Tune/My Favorite Things /The Sound of Music/Take Me Out to the Ball Game /This Land Is Your Land /Tomorrow.) The CD contains demos for listening and separate backing tracks so you can sing along. The CD is playable on any CD player but also enhanced so Mac & PC users can adjust the recording to any pitch without changing the tempo.
  • Singing Lessons for Little Singers: Level A – Very Young Beginner Series for children ages 4 to 7 teaches professional singing techniques and fundamental musicianship skills. It includes topics like breath support vocal registration (high/low voice), vowels and diction, resonate tone quality, intonation (singing in tune), solfege scale and intervals, beat and rhythm, and reading music. Singing Lessons for Little Singers: A 3-in-1 Voice, Ear-Training and Sight-Singing Method for Children by the same author is also highly recommended.
  • Sing After Me has echo songs to help young vocalists learn to sing with practically perfect pitch and deliberate diction. The book includes a sing-a-long and demonstration CD, reproducible student worksheets for classroom use, and movement, art, and language activities for each song. Vocalists can echo the leader provided on the CD or sing the melodies using the accompaniment tracks. These melodies will help young singers improve vocal independence, pitch, and diction. Ages 6-12.
  • The Book of Pitch Exploration for ages 3 to 7 years. This book allows children to discover these sounds through ideas, poems, stories, and songs that invite vocal participation from all involved. These fun activities are also excellent vocal warm-ups.

Websites to Help Kids Learn to Sing

  • Teaching Kids to Sing specializes in educational music resources for early childhood and elementary-aged children: ready-to-use songs, games, and teaching resources you can download immediately and use with your children today.
  • Sing Up has resources and ideas to make singing part of every child’s learning. It is primarily aimed at schools, but parents can also use some of the resources available to teach kids to sing at home.
  • Music Theory has an excellent exercise for ear training.

Learn to Sing Apps for Kids

We couldn’t find many apps to teach singing that was explicitly designed for kids, but there are some fantastic apps out there for adults that can help improve kids singing as well. Here are some of our favorites:

  • Sing Harmonies Free is a great app that is helpful to teaching kids to sing harmony by playing and muting individual voices while playing 4- part vocal arrangements of Lean On Me, Teach Your Children, and Proud Mary.
  • Staraoke was one of the few great apps we found that kids can use to help improve their singing. It is an iPad game where a player controls a character on the screen with a picture of his/her voice. The Staraoke software recognizes the singer’s pitch. If you sing correctly, the character stays on the path, and you ramp up points. This game comes with three popular kids’ songs, “Brother John”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” and “Old MacDonald had a farm”.
  • VocalizeU Lite is a singer essential training kit including live vocal experts a vocal recorder, vocal journal, pitch and ear training programs, and adjustable warm-ups.
  • Voice Builder has its users vocalize to a tone that is always in perfect pitch. volume & pitch guides, over 20 voice-building sessions for both male and female singers
  • Voice Tutor helps you determine your particular vocal challenge by having you sing scales and then listening to four different examples. These four examples demonstrate the four different voice types, making it easy for you to determine what your particular vocal challenge is. This app also has four sets of exercises (each containing over an hour of lessons), a pitch meter to check your pitch as you sing through your lessons, a full vocal warm-up, and also a breathing exercise section to help you significantly increase your breath control.
  • Do Re Mi Ear Training and Voice Training are great apps to show how to teach kids to sing on pitch. They have tons of customizable settings that let you work on intervals, relative pitch, perfect pitch, and use a variety of notation types.