I've started a choir at my local primary school and am having problems finding suitable music for that age group. We're still mostly singing in unison, although I have tried a bit of 2 part singing. I've been using songs from musicals and a couple of Disney songs, as well as a group of songs called Right to Survive by Debbie Campbell, which are great. I love John Rutter's songs, but find most of them rather too long and complicated for my young singers. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

There's a lovely song called "Little Jenny Wren" that's suitable for young children. I can't for the life of me remember who wrote it but someone else on here will probably know it. It has an easy accompaniment too.

Thanks! I should have said that as a piano teacher I'm looking for songs that don't have easy accompaniments.

Well, as a piano teacher too, I still like to see the odd easy one!

I used to use the book called Sing Together (Appleby and Fowler) quite a lot. Not challenging accompaniments but some good songs there. Amongst the other favourites of mine and the choir if not the headmistress! were The Happy Wanderer, Dona Nobis Pacem as a round (anon but found in lots of books of rounds and catches) and Mango Walk.

Don't feel you have to accompany them all the time - they will sing much better on their own...

There are some lovely songs circulating in Girlguiding (not just campfire yells, but beautiful 2-part things as well) - find a musical Guide/Brownie leader and ask her to lend you her books. I use loads of these with my choirs. Rounds are a great way into part-singing. Sue Stevens' "Let's all go to the fairground" and "We're all going to the zoo" are always great hits.

Selected folk songs work well with this age-group, too.

PM me if you want more details.

Thanks for the advice. I know I should get them to sing more on their own, but am so used to playing for them. But I will try at the next rehearsal!
Are the Sue Stevens songs in a book of rounds?
If you could recommend any other songs or books, I'd be really grateful. It isn't easy to find songs that appeal to the 6 year-olds as well as the 11 year-olds.

My choir loved the music from www.outoftheark.com

Especially the Songs for every....series.

Please Miss, is a particular favourite and very amusing. Also some two part music in there.

Also try the Singing Sherlock books. We use these mainly for fun warmups.

Very suitable for Yrs 3-6

Well done, Jenny for starting a choir! My son's primary school does not even have a choir

I love Michael Hurd's cantatas... Swinging Samson is one of my favourite! Horovitz's Joseph and His Technicolour Dreamcoat, too, has lot of groovy tunes!

Singing Sherlock was the bane of my life!!! Someone from my former school went on a one day course that included a workshop for non-musicians on how to run a junior choir. She came back armed with this book, telling me how wonderful it was and wanted me to work on one of the songs from it for the TERM to perform at the next concert. Try as I might I could not get the children to enthuse much over these and the performance was dull to say the least. They are good as warm-up songs though. I had spent a few years working with my choirs and they were good. They were able to perform far better and more challenging songs than "Something's Right behind Me"!

Hi

My younger Youth Choir has enjoyed Jonah Man Jazz by Michael Hurd and is now loving Rooster rag by Michael Hurd. There is a little bit of two part spitting, and at less than 15 minutes long are easy to memorise, and there is also the possibility of adding some movements.

Hope this helps

Jo

Sorry to correct you but Joseph was one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's compositions. Horovitz wrote Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo. That is great fun too.

petrat, thank you for correcting my mistake! I know both works and just got muddled up!

I love the Songscape and Junior Songscape - they are a bit more modern - probably more suited to upper primary. My kids love them as it makes them feel a bit more "grown up" than some of the regular choir repertoire.

When my children were at junior school their choir sang Jonah Man Jazz and they enjoyed it so much that we got our own copy.

At our C&C intermediates concerts there has been a choir made up of loads of primary school kids - so far, some of the pieces they have sung include:
'Silver Moon' and 'Aliens' by Lin Marsh (the performance of 'Aliens' included crazy headband things and was quite a hit!), 'We are the Young' by Mary Donnelly (I loved this one!) and 'Times must be changing' by Alan Simmons (the kids liked this one!), 'Get on Board this train' (trad. arr. Besig), 'Don't let them spoil the rain' (Alan Simmons), 'Believe' (Lin Marsh) and 'Peanut Vendor' (Moises Simons arr. Steward)

Not sure where abouts in the world you are - but if you are anywhere near Derbyshire, try and get hold of a woman called Rachel Wilkes - she put together the choirs for these concerts with superb results! I think she works for the music service and she seems to have a lot of experience with primary school choirs so she could probably come up with loads of suggestions! She's also really lovely

There's some good stuff in Voiceworks vol 1 and 2 and also junior Voiceworks. Lots of good material also on the Kodaly Website.

Thank you so much for the ideas. I'm really grateful.
Any clues as to how to contact Rachel Wilkes?

I too am just starting up a junior choir (having left the school where I built up a highly successful one over many years).

I can't recommend the Sing for Pleasure Junior Song Books highly enough. They are A5 size with only a few pages in each and you can buy the whole set for under £30, I think (check the SfP website). They are full of echo songs, action songs, simple rounds and part-songs. I particularly like 'The Forth Bridge' (I pinched some excellent actions to go with this one from a choir I saw perform it at a festival once ) and when my choir did 'A Young Austrian' at a big concert several years ago they almost brought the house down!

I would reiterate the recommendations of Voiceworks, although I have to admit to being disappointed with Junior Voiceworks.

Generally, anything by Lin Marsh and Jan Holdstock is very good. Lin's 'Spooky Songs' have gone down a storm in the past. Jan's 'Tell Out the News' is an excellent Christmas piece which builds up three separate verses which can all be sung together at the same time.

Alan Simmons also produces a lot of material in attractive collections. The quality is a bit variable but he is very good at writing partner songs (where the children learn two or three separate melodies which then fit together). A lot of his songs are humorous and bouncy (I particularly liked 'Winter Sport') but I actually like his slower songs better. Two real winners, for me, are 'Butterfly' and 'Creatures of the Deep' although with all his songs I tend to play around with them a bit and usually get the children to sing the two parts separately before putting them together.

Alfred Publishing do masses of good stuff - Level 1 is excellent for beginning choirs. There is lots of slushy schmaltzy stuff (hooray! ) which is especially good for Christmas (Level 2 in particular has quite a lot of quodlibet-type stuff). The composers I've particularly enjoyed are Sally K Albrecht, Jay Althouse and Don Besig/Nancy Price. They also publish a book called 'Grab a Partner' which has easy two-part arrangements of songs such as 'Kum Ba Yah' and 'Shoo Fly'. We sang two of their particularly slushy ones at the weddings of two teachers and there wasn't a dry eye in the house! One of them - 'Go Forth with a Song' I've also used successfully (ie hankies out again ) for Year 6 Leavers' Assemblies. PM me if you would like to know exactly which Alfred pieces I've done.

Youngchoirs.net publishes a series called 'Junior Choral Club' by Jo McNally. At first I thought these looked really good but I'm afraid I've never managed to be inspired enough by any of them to do them successfully. The piano parts are meant to be simple but they are also pretty horrible in places. A real shame...but don't dismiss them, do have a look - I heard one choir perform 'Engine, Engine' quite effectively at a festival.

Doreen Rao's 'Choral Music Experience' has some good things - look at the junior anthologies. 'A Manx Lullaby' is unison with piano and very beautiful (veers between major and Mixolydian) - especially if you can find a good flautist from somewhere.

I would reiterate the cantata recommendations given so far. 'Jonah' is not THAT easy but great when you get to that stage.

John Bryan has written some lovely cantatas - my favourite being 'The Selfish Giant'.

Oh - and I have to also put in a plea for you to try unaccompanied singing. If the children always, always sing with a piano they will use it as a crutch and will find it increasingly difficult to sing without it. They will also not take such care with tuning. Solfa is a tremendous tool for improving intonation and general aural awareness - PM me if you would like to know more. Also if you are always behind the piano you are 'distanced' from the children - unaccompanied work allows you much more eye-contact and 'connection' between conductor and singers.

Hmmm - I think that's probably enough to be going on with for now!

Best of luck and enjoy!

Not entirely sure you need to after Cyrilla's post - looks like we have our very own Rachel online!!
Will PM you the details I can find for the music centre - that's as close as I can get so far!
Best of luck with your new choir!
hoxie
xxx

I too am just starting up a junior choir (having left the school where I built up a highly successful one over many years).

do please email details of your new choir, Cyrilla - in case I have pupils / students' children who might be interested. I know of one who is looking for a choir to join, I have made one (fairly obvious) ; )recommendation, but would welcome other ideas.

Hope it goes well, by the way.

Hi maggie (nice to see you back on the forums, by the way!) - sorry, I should have said - it's a school choir. I'm working one day a week at another Bromley school which has an excellent band tradition but not much in the way of class music. I did teach there for two years previously - left four years ago - but didn't have a choir on that occasion. It is the first time ever (I think!) that the school has had a choir. Despite the strong instrumental provision in the school, the children are not terribly used to singing and only sing along to tapes in assembly (at the moment....!!).

I've never set up a 'private' choir but if you think there might be enough take-up locally to make it work, please let me know and I could possibly do that.

Awww, hoxie - thanks!!

Hi Cyrilla - sorry and thanks! I don't know why I jumped to the wrong conclusion there.

and only sing along to tapes in assembly (at the moment....!!).

something tells me that might be about to change ??

Hope it goes well!

Thanks maggie - will be introducing a Real Live Pianist (no, obviously NOT me ) to accompany Hymn Practice tomorrow - think it may be a shocking concept to them...

Oh - and I have to also put in a plea for you to try unaccompanied singing. If the children always, always sing with a piano they will use it as a crutch and will find it increasingly difficult to sing without it. They will also not take such care with tuning. Solfa is a tremendous tool for improving intonation and general aural awareness - PM me if you would like to know more. Also if you are always behind the piano you are 'distanced' from the children - unaccompanied work allows you much more eye-contact and 'connection' between conductor and singers.

Hmmm - I think that's probably enough to be going on with for now!

Best of luck and enjoy!


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Hear Hear!!!

I've found some good ideas in this thread for my own choir, thanks!

I set up a local community choir a year ago. I have 10 youngsters ranging from 5 to 9. We are affiliated to a church choir, although I try to strike a balance between church and other material and engagements.

I've been using "Singing Sherlock" for warmups (agree with previous post and don't use it for the "meat" of a practice!!!), also Junior Songscape which has worked well. They LOVE "The last dinosaur"!

I've also been using "Seasons, Songs and Celebrations" by Sheila Wilson. The seasons songs are good for the younger ones since the chorus is the same each time, and they are quite repetitive. They also liked "Christmas is a sign of God's love". Last Christmas we did the Lin Marsh/Karl Jenkins "Just another Star" which was nice.

We've just surfaced from a joint production of Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo with the adult choir which was fun.

David, you mentioned "singbook" - I love so many of those songs, but I'm worried they are too "old" for the choir. Having said that on national day for peace the other week a couple of local primary schools sang "no wars will stop us singing". I'm not sure.

If anyone else has experience of singbook with younger age children then I would be really keen to hear your feedback.

And good ideas for Christmas too!

Happy singing

Juflute

I agree that Singbook is too 'old' for the younger children in the age group you mention.

Ah, I love 'Just Another Star' too! (I don't think it's Lin Marsh with Karl Jenkins though - might it have been Carol Barrett???).

Hear, Hear, Hear!!!

Does anyone have any idea where I can get a copy of Jan Holdstock's "Tell out the news"?

I fancy doing it with my choir, but I only know it because I learned it when I was at school (was sooooo good that I can stil remember it).

Even if someone can provide the lyrics, that would help? I can remember the first verse and a bit of the second!

Thanks

It's published by Oxford University Press - I got mine recently from musicroom. It looks really good - I'm starting it next week with my choir.
By the way, thanks to everyone who helped me with their many suggestions at the start of this topic! I'm really grateful.
Jenny

Thanks - just ordered it - you're a star!!!

The series of songbooks from 'Sing for Pleasure' are great for junior and infant choirs, too.

hillyb

I recommend:

Fly Away by Don Besig
One Song by Mary Docherty
As Long As I Have Music by Don Besig
Gonna Rise Up Singing by Don Besig

I've used these with primary school choirs in music festivals and the kids, and the audience love them.

Jenny: There's a little 'musicalette' called 'The Midnight Thief', written by Ian Seraillier and Richard Rodney Bennett, published in the sixties, and great fun to do.

I agree, Don Besig (and Nancy Price) write wonderfully slushy schmaltzy American stuff - have done 'As Long as I Have Music' - great if you like that sort of thing (I do!) .

Although I don't use the correct Solfa hand signals, I do find that when conducting children I move my hands up and down to reflect the shape of the music. Always give your choir proper music. They may not read it fully, but again it indicates the shape of the melody. Don't expect miracles, and when you get the cry of "but I don't read music" reassure them that at this stage it isn't that importnat, but that following the dots will help.

If you like Rutter, there's a nice unison version of the Gaelic Blessing. And another tip if you need to be repetiteur and conductor, record the piano part yourself (or ask a friend) and use it as a backing track.

I've done this with my own pupils and sent them home with practice CDs. It's worked very well.

Known to certain members of a choir I worked with as the Garlic Dressing.

WOuld fit in with this season's "highly flavoured gravy!"

Intreresting, that. As I was accompanying my choir today, my choirmaster asked the choristers to take out their 'Great and Mighty Blunders'. I know there are loads of other such soubriquets, (such as 'Most highly flavoured Lady, etc) and I've smiled at them, too, but is it right for children to hear them? Perhaps I'm just being a prude.

I once heard a performance of "Angles from the realms of glory" that must have put the wind up the celts!