How to teach your child to sing???

Early Learning Teaching Your Child Music
1

We have a four year old daughter who loves to sing, most children do I imagine. My husband and I want to enroll her in an activity and he would like to be singing. I looked at community ed, not offered. I have not put a request out in the paper for a singing teacher. Our church does not have a childrens choir. There are not dvds at the library.
Any suggestions?

Also how does one go about teaching singing at home. We sing songs, make up songs at home, listen to cd, have sing a long dvds,
but I AM NOT A SINGER, I could drop a bird out of the sky with my voice :confused:

As far as teaching pitch I am the last person to try to teach that.

But does one teach a four year old pitch at this stage or just the love of music?

Thanks

2

Trebellina is a program to help teach your child music and they are also a partner of brill kids, and you can get discount voucher from the forum shop.

This is what they say about trebellina from their website:

Teach Your Baby Music With Trebellina
Countless parents want to afford their children the opportunities associated with a better education and know that teaching music to young children is a great way to start.
Music is a language. Like all languages, the earlier it is introduced, the better. Just as you begin to teach your baby to speak your native language starting at birth, you can teach your baby music!

Are you a parent looking for a way to develop your young child’s musical abilities before he or she is old enough to take formal music lessons? The award-winning Trebellina DVD will help you take on the task with music lessons created just for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Trebellina helps young children develop pitch and teaches them to read music in a super fun and engaging manner. Trebellina’s patented method of teaching note reading and pitch is simultaneously effective and entertaining. The Trebellina DVD also introduces little ones to instrument names and their sounds, beautifully demonstrating how different instruments sound individually and collectively in a piece of music.

Most parents are acutely aware of the amazing abilities of a baby’s brain. Yet many parents do not take advantage of these first few years of life to expose their babies to concepts such as reading or music which are so easily learned at that time. The baby’s power to absorb what it experiences through sight, sound, and feeling is not to be underestimated! Babies can learn music, just as they learn any other language!

The Trebellina DVD occupies a special place in a modern baby’s musical development. Trebellina fills the gap between the mommy-and-me music classes currently offered to young children and the formal music lessons that young children typically wait years before they can begin. Trebellina also helps round out the musical experience for young children who study Suzuki through its emphasis on reading written music. Moreover, with Trebellina, parents jumpstart their children’s music education at a fraction of the cost of just one typical music lesson!

Trebellina has won many awards and accolades from “noteworthy” organizations, including Dr. Toy, iParenting Media, Aegis, Dove and The National Parenting Center. More importantly, parents and children worldwide rave over Trebellina.

This is where I got the information from:

http://www.trebellina.com/about-trebellina.html

3

I would probably put a post asking for a voice coach.

4

You can check this site out:
http://www.acceleratedlearningmethods.com/perfect-pitch-training.html

5

That was a good site. I have only heard of Trebellina before through this site :D.
I wonder if it is possible for an adult to learn perfect pitch, would it be impossible or just very hard :unsure:

6

I really wouldn’t hire a private voice coach at this age. It’s not about being mentally prepared, but physically children aren’t up to the demands of private lessons. Children’s choirs are great because they don’t push the voice as hard as private lessons do, and a good teacher will spread the activities out so they’re not singing the whole time. I really like the Kodaly method for children’s singing. There is actually a book called “The Kodaly Method” (pronounced Koh-die) by Lois Choksy which is very excellent, and would give you all the information you need to teach your children at home, including a list of songs the sequentially follow the method at the back. My book is 15 years old, you wouldn’t have to buy the newest edition, or you can see if the local university has it. Children in Hungary, where the method is used in the public schools, often begin with this method when they’re three in the nursery schools, so it’s developmentally appropriate. Also, for a child who loves to sing, learning an instrument is very beneficial. I always loved singing growing up, but I only had piano and violin lessons. I had my first vocal lesson in college, where I majored in vocal performance. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t had voice lessons because I had such a solid foundation from choir, piano, and violin. I hope this helps.

7

Tamsyn; Oh thanks for the insight especially since you majored in vocal performance. I will look into the book and see if it is available at the library. We also will enroll her into instrumental instruction of some sort, I was thinking the violin, since my brother has one and could start out helping her, he no longer plays.

Rose 8 and hypatia; I did go to the Cristofori web site but have just book marked it to look at later with my daughter. I need to read more about the Trebellina. I wanted to get something with dvds so she can watch and learn.

8

Tamsyn: I looked up the book and it is availabe but it has a few different titles, I requested the one : comprehensive music education from infant to adult.
Is this the one you have? Also available, Kodaly Method 1. Not sure which one to get so I just went with the most fitting title.

9

my husband has perfect pitch and he doesn’t like Trebellina. I would go for the book - am glad it’s available in our library.

there is also a website with “ear training” that i have seen before. here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eVpRS2jL8Y

http://www.pianolessonsunlimited.com/lessons/ear_training_101/

there is also another site that am checking out: http://www.musictheory.net/index.html

10

why doesn’t your husband like it?

11

I also would wait to get private lessons. I really like the idea of something like Soft Mozart http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/early-childhood-and-music-education-new-approach/ to begin teaching music because it can move at the child’s pace, when the child is ready. No pressure to practice for expensive lessons. I really want to be careful about over-scheduling my children at too young an age so they don’t burn out, but I also want them to have access to a music education if/when they are interested. Check out this video. http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/early-childhood-and-music-education-new-approach/msg23968/#msg23968

My mom wasn’t much of a singer either, I never noticed this as a child, but now I really hear it. She listened to a lot of sing along music when I was young & I loved to join in. By the time I was in middle school I sang well enough to be in a selective choir. So I guess getting some fun music CD’s to sing to, even if you aren’t a singer, would be helpful as well.

12

i cannot sing . i am musically deaf , I didn’t have the privilege of rich music environment growing up . i learned to listen to and enjoy music as an adult . i wanted better for my children , so i played cds for them different variety of music , i bought dvds kindermusic type , classes of mums and babies singing and my babies love those , i learned by copying what 's on the dvd . every day we have half an hour of kinder music class . my three years old sings very well and you should see her shaking her body to the music . she even creates her own version of the songs changing words. she sometimes communicate with us in jingles . she is so cute when she does it .
i feel bad that where we are there are no proper classes to nurture her love to music . i am keeping my eyes open to special products that we can use together at home , unfortuantly this is all we can do for now where we live .any recommendations ??
viv

13

Thanks TwoAngels for the vid and the link.
Even I am interested to know why your husband doesn’t like trebellina?

14

when he saw the sample video, he immediately saw some errors and inconsistencies in the notes versus the material being presented. he said it’ll be better to just teach our toddler in front of a piano (in our case, keyboard) than to use this video.

btw, the last link i posted has a lot of stuff on it about music - it even has a translations page where you can view the website in portugese, french, serbian, polish, swedish and you can also download the whole website for offline viewing.

15

May I suggest you PM Cristofori http://forum.brillkids.com/profile/?u=1397 and let her know of the problems. If people aren’t aware of a problem, they will never know to fix it. If there are mistakes, they should be brought to her attention since so many children are watching the DVD. But you know, it has won awards. I find it hard to believe that a DVD with mistakes would win awards.

16

I was a music major in high school. I lettered in advanced choir 7 times in 3 years (I was taking 3 choir classes senior year) I have an amazing voice and my mother can not sing to save her life. your kids can turn out just fine musically even if you cant sing. I believe that children can be taught to sing. I have not started Trebilina yet with my kids but will let you know what I think when we get there. My daughter is just starting to get excited about music and singing so we just work with her all the time. DO SCALES WITH THEM!! they can copy you and pick up so much. just doing do re mi is going to help a lot. if your child can sign look up kolay hand signs they are great to help children learn the scales going up and down. But the most important thing that you can do with your little one is SING TO THEM and WITH THEM all the time. make up silly songs in the tub sing everything you see on the way to the park ect.

17

Princessclem- I am like your mom except, When I sing people’s ears bleed lol. What I hope doesn’t happen is when they copy me it doesn’t stick becausel do,re, mi sounds like, please help me :biggrin:
but I can see by your blog that there is hope that my children will not be damage by my singing to them. :slight_smile:
I do make up silly song since I can’t remember half the word to any music anyway :nowink: I guess that’s why my daughter is good at “rapping” her own songs. :wink:

18

lol I am sure that she will be fine. do your best and your angels can fill in where we fail. and you are actually doing something really helpfull when you cant remember the words you are teaching your baby improv skills! so look on the bright side and keep up the great work, at young ages it is much more about your intent and not your expertise.

19

I can’t help here. I could wake the dead with my singing voice. :slight_smile:

20

Purplefungi- I noticed on one other topic blog- Second languages that you mentioned you lived in Dearborn, I also live in Michigan. How funny is that. lol