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Breaking it down allows you to make kids comfortable, give them confidence, and, most importantly, not practice mistakes.

intellectualizing, listening, and blowing

Intellectualizing means thoroughly understanding the constructs of music –rhythmically, melodically, idiomatically, and tonally – before attempting the final product.

Olivia's TEDxYouth@Edmonton speech discusses the effects of music education in the lives of youth.

hear the silence – every song starts from silence. Remind your choir. Ask them to stand in silence and focus on the sounds they can hear from outside the rehearsal room (wind, cars, children playing, dogs), then ask them to re-focus on the sounds from inside the rehearsal space (breathing, creaking floor, shuffling, throat clearing, doors banging).

sing the same note and disappear – choose a note that everyone can sing comfortably in the same octave for quite some time. Get everyone to stand very close together facing different directions. Mix the usual parts up. Everyone starts to sing on an ‘aw’ as a sustained drone. Tell the singers that after they’ve taken a breath they need to gently ease back into the overall sound. Ask them to match the quality and volume of all those around them. Tell them that you want them to disappear into the sound so it’s not possible to tell who is singing what.

stop conducting – one problem with a choir can be that the singers become so used to someone standing in front of them conducting that they stop taking responsibility for themselves and start to believe they can’t do it without that person guiding them. Without telling the choir, start a song off, gradually stop conducting, then walk off and listen. There will be an initial blip probably, but then they’ll manage fine and begin to listen more to each other. Repeat the exercise, but just give the starting notes and tell them they all have to begin together but without you bringing them in.

It is best to introduce the sol-fa names by learning to recognise the intervals in familiar nursery songs.

Start by teaching your little one So-Mi, which in the scale of C is G and E and sounds like “cuckoo” or “see-saw.”