As a global community we all find ourselves in exceptional and unprecedented times. In these trying times, we're working hard to do everything we can to help you and your young people keep on singing and we've put together Sing Up at Home to help you do just that.
Please feel free to explore all the songs and activities in this area. Everything in Sing Up at Home has been specially curated to support parents and families, schools who are still open for keyworkers' children, schools who are sending out home schooling activities to pupils and virtual choirs. We'll be adding more resources as we go, so stay informed by signing up to updates.
Let us know how you're getting on by tagging us and using the hashtag #SingUpatHome on social channels - Twitter | Facebook | YouTube. Please also let us know if you have any ideas, submissions or requests – we love hearing from you.
Here’s a few pointers to get you started and ideas on how you might want to use our songs, videos and resources.
Key Features
Song of the Week
Every week, we'll be adding a Song of the Week teaching video with some activites that go along with it. These videos can be used either at home or in school settings. We'd love to hear how you're getting on with these so please share your videos with us!
Playlists
We've created special themed playlists for you – Silly stuff, Relaxing/soothing, Songs to get moving and Empowering/inspiring. Feel free to use these however you'd like! They're great for singing but you can also use them for listening, dancing, background music – anything at all. We've added some of our (and your) absolute faves and have got everything from Disney tunes, to traditional songs, to pop radio winners and gorgeous Sing Up classics.
Song player
Throughout Sing Up at Home you'll find our newly launched streaming player, you can use this to play our performance and backing tracks. Just press play!
Record your own
If you're making a video or running a virtual choir or singing assembly for your pupils, you can play the songs using this player on one device whilst recording with another. We'd love to see your videos and know how you're getting on. Make sure you tag us on social channels and use #SingUpatHome.
For Families
In addition to using our playlists, why not learn our Song of the Week every week with your family? We've also got some other teaching videos, Makaton videos and fun activities to go along with specific songs – like a frog mask to go along with the song Hey little frog!
For Schools
Please feel free to send our Song of the Week to your pupils every week. They can learn the song and sing a long with their families. We'll also have linked activities that they can do at home. This is a great way to keep everyone singing.
If you're sending home schooling activities to your pupils, we've put together a load of activities especially for this purpose. As the songs and resources are available on our site, you can link directly to our site's pages. If you visit Sing Up at Home, you'll find a section called 'Songs for Learning about Topics'. Explore our available topics here. If you've got any other topic requests, please get in touch. Remember, Members you can also explore all of our other songs and resources to get activity ideas to send home to your pupils too. Please do however bear in mind our guide on sharing Sing Up resources which are not in the Sing Up at Home area.
If you're still open for keyworkers' children, you can of course use our Sing Up at Home area, but Members can use the whole rest of the site too. As you know, there's a wealth of songs and activities available!
For Virtual Choirs
Have a look at our selection of warm-ups, unison songs, part songs and Sing Up Day songs. You can access all the tracks for streaming straight from our site so if you're making teaching videos, you can stream the songs to teach with virtually. Singers in your choirs can practise at home by streaming the rehearsal and backing tracks for songs that are in the choir area. Create your own virtual choir videos using the Acapella App - all you need is a phone, some headphones with a built in microphone and you could live stream the audio tracks or record a live accompaniment. All the Sing Up Day songs also have scores. Remember to tag us – we'd love to join in too!
Fun musical learning ideas for using our backing tracks
- Be a singing star – make your own vocal recording (you’ll need two devices – one to play the backing track and another to record onto, i.e. phone and tablet. You can use a voice recorder as the recording device.
- Create some choreography.
- Be inspired by The Marsh family and create your own spoof song video.
- Write a new song to one of our backing tracks.
- Create body percussion to one of our backing tracks and teach it to someone.
- Create your own vocal arrangement and use a cappella app to record it.
- Beat box along to a track.
- If you’ve got an instrument work out the tune by ear or the chords to a song.
- Practise a song for a virtual choir or assembly session.
- Make a multi voice performance soundtrack How? Stream the backing track out loud from a device (i.e. phone) and wearing headphones (with an inbuilt mic) record yourself singing along (on a tablet or computer). Do this for each singing voice. Import the audio into a freely available recording app and mix. Check how many tracks you can import before starting and check the recording formats required for the app and device ie MP3?
- Practise … listening, singing or playing by ear – play any track and try to: tap the pulse, pick out instruments you can hear, learn the chorus, sing a verse, play the melody on an instrument, find out about the original artist, or the style…
We hope that you enjoy using Sing Up at Home. We'd love to hear any requests, submissions or brilliant ideas you may have. Given the times we're living in with so many changes about, we value your input greatly and really want to know how we can help.
Please stay in touch and let us know how you are getting on. Drop us a line through our contact form or write to us on Twitter and Facebook. We love to hear from you.
Take care and keep singing.
