Between the Staves: Choral Questions, Candid Answers, is fresh take on the classic advice column—this time for all things choral music! Modeled after the beloved “Dear Sally” format, this blog will answer your questions about choral music education, performance, and leadership. Whether you’re curious about vocal technique, rehearsal tips, repertoire selection, or the “other” side of our profession (business, fundraising, scheduling, recruiting, communication, audio engineering, etc.!), Between the Staves will have you covered.
This Month’s Question Is:
“I teach a group of first-time ensemble singers who are 5 and 6 years old at a public elementary school. They meet once a week for a 30-minute rehearsal, and all singing is currently done in unison. These students have no prior music education experience, and for many, this is their first exposure to structured singing.
My goal is to begin developing a traditional bel canto head voice—light, free, and resonant—from the very beginning. I want to set them up with healthy vocal habits and introduce the foundations of beautiful tone, breath connection, and vocal placement in a way that feels age-appropriate and engaging.
Could you share resources, strategies or specific exercises that support the development of a head voice in very young, untrained singers within these time and experience constraints? I’m especially looking for playful or imaginative approaches that make the concept of head voice accessible and fun at this developmental level.”—Anonymous, 2nd Grade General Education Teacher, California, 10 years of teaching (1 in music)
This Month’s Responses Are:
Introducing healthy vocal habits and a sense of ease in the head voice at such an early stage can lay the groundwork for a lifetime of free, expressive singing. Working with 5- and 6-year-olds in a first ensemble experience brings both unique challenges and delightful opportunities: their natural curiosity, flexibility, and imagination make them ideal candidates for playful, discovery-based learning.
To explore this topic in depth, we invited youth choir and vocal pedagogy experts to share their insights. Below, they offer strategies, exercises, and resources designed specifically for nurturing a light, resonant head voice in young singers – approaches that balance solid pedagogy with the joy and creativity that early childhood music-making should inspire.
Dr. John McDonald
Chair, ACDA Education and Communication Committee
Everything at this age should be approached playfully. Instead of traditional choral warmups, have your students follow a roller coaster or a bird puppet to explore their vocal range. With a simple pen line on the board, you can draw highs, lows and vocal sirens for them to follow with their voices and hands. Use echo singing to ask them their names, favorite colors or ice cream flavors using a so-la-mi pitch pattern. With each question, model the healthy vocal technique and breath connection that you are looking for.
Simple call and response singing games like “Doggie, doggie, where’s my bone?” or “Lemonade” also offer joyful opportunities for children to develop confidence singing alone. These games also allow you to see which singers are still learning to match pitch and which singers are your musical leaders. Fingerplays, like “Two Little Blackbirds,” also help students explore their range, and are particularly helpful for monotone speakers or students still learning to match pitch. Children at this age have a small vocal range. If you are preparing for a performance, I recommend looking for arrangements of culturally diverse folk songs that use a pentatonic scale with limited range or using simple canons and echo songs. Keeping it simple will allow them to develop their voices beautifully and to sing accurately with healthy technique.
Julie Haydon
Director of Children’s and Youth Choirs, Cantare
Oakland, CA
25 years experience
The number one strategy for singers this age is modeling, modeling, modeling. Not only are you their number one vocal model, but you can use videos of children and adults alike singing in different registers and styles, and train your singers to hear the difference.
In order to keep them singing in their head voice, start every rehearsal with a warm up that encourages them to do so. Sirens, sighs, etc. and warm ups that start with a siren and then descend (i.e. *siren on ahh* then Ahhh 5-4-3-2-1) are excellent for this.
Doing it playfully and in a low stakes way can look like naming the different registers: our head voice is Mickey Mouse, our chest voice is Ariana Grande, and we’re going to go back and forth between the two. You can have them do this in warm ups or within your repertoire. Let them go aggressively too far in either direction; experiment and explore before dialing it back to your desired sound. In my choir we call it “doing it wrong to get it right.” In doing this you are asking them to build awareness around how much control they have over what their voices do and sound like, and giving them the power to self-correct.
Finally, we know with singers of all ages that kinesthetic movement can be incredibly helpful! Have them use their whole bodies to reach for the sky, throw a baseball, etc. One favorite of mine is “place a feather on a shelf,” which works for those large leaps in the melodic contour. Think of the octave leap in the third phrase of Happy Birthday: have them place a feather on a high shelf as they sing it. Then place a bowling ball (be super dramatic here, they’re lifting that bowling ball from the very depths of the floor!!!), then a feather again. Discuss with them: what did the feather feel like? What did it sound like? What did the bowling ball feel and sound like?
When in doubt, have them relax their bodies with a little shake out and try again. Remind yourself that you are laying the foundation and helping them build the habit. It won’t be perfect every day!
Bethany Main
Artistic Director, Youth Chorus of Kansas City
8 years experience
The very first thing I do to establish the fundamentals of a healthy, resonant tone for ANY group of first-time ensemble singers, regardless of age, is to make sure they understand that “I,” the conductor/teacher, am not in charge of the sound that comes out of “them.” They are in charge of their sound. They are wind instruments and they each have a “tube,” just like any brass player might play an instrument that has an obvious tube. Any questions that encourage the students to recall and visualize wind instruments they can think of is always helpful. Explain to them where “their tube” is: top of the larynx to the aperture of the lips. Talk about ways they can open, close, and change the shape of their tube. (For slightly older students, there are several BRILLIANT videos on YouTube that show MRI images of singers doing various things, including beatboxing, which is my personal favorite. It’s a great way to really have singers visualize where their tube is and just how malleable it can be.). For young students, something as simple as having them open their jaw down and then less so, rounding and then spreading lips, or moving their tongues up and down or in and out can help them start to recognize the ways they can intentionally change their tube.
The next step would be to show them that when they change something about the tube that will change the sound. Something fun I like to do is have singers sing [a] and then just move their tongue in an out of their mouth, or round and un-round their lips to hear the sound change. Keep drawing their attention to the fact that THEY are intentionally making those changes to the tube and those changes ultimately change the sound.
Once they recognize that they have a “tube” and they are in charge of it, then their job (with your help, as you build fundamentals of breath and vowel) becomes to make a healthy, resonant, and in-tune sound by way of two tasks: 1. Keep their tube open and shaped in a helpful way and 2. Keep the air going through their tube.
Dr. Jami Rhodes-Galloway
Vocal Studies Area Coordinator; Professor of Voice; Director of Vocal Pedagogy; Concert Choir Conductor
East Carolina University
21 years experience
Further reading:
“The Shy Non-Singer—Elementary Teachers, Take Note!” by Michele Hobizal; Vol 8. Issue 3, Spring 2016, ChorTeach.
“Voices in your Head: A Method for Teaching Audiation in the Secondary Choral Classroom” by Micah Bland; Vol 10. Issue 4, Summer 2018, ChorTeach.
“Introductory Vocal Pedagogy in the Elementary Classroom,” by Debra G. Gordon. September 2001, page 19, Choral Journal.
Have a question you’d like addressed on the blog? Send it in by clicking the button below. No question is too specific or too big-picture–ask away, and let’s all grow and learn together!
Between the Staves is an initiative of the ACDA Education and Collaboration National Standing Committee. For questions, contact John McDonald at .
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