Yesterday I repeated something I did a couple of years ago and went to my son’s nursery to lead the children there in some singing. They like parents to come in and do things for the children from time to time if they have appropriate skills. So I sat in a rocking chair and we (me, about 30 children and nursery staff) sang nursery rhymes and children’s songs for about 20 minutes. This time round I was a bit more aware of current versions than I was before, when the little ones startled me with an extra bit of ‘Baa baa black sheep’ that must have been added since I was a child!
My son’s favourite song at the moment is the one which runs through the alphabet to the tune of the first three lines of ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’. This gets you as far as W; X, Y and Z are then delivered in a kind of Sprechgesänge at the end. When my daughter was not quite two, we suddenly noticed her doing the standard actions while we were listening to Mozart’s piano variations on this theme on a CD.
One thing I notice at all the children’s singing groups I’ve been to is that songs tend to be pitched lower than is necessary for children’s naturally high voices. (It’s a tendency that worries some music teachers too!) The extreme case was one a couple of years ago where the (female) leader was I think a heavy smoker and rarely ventured above even middle C. I try to avoid doing this if I’m leading, and if others sink into the basement I just sing those bits an octave up.