Take any nursery rhyme or song and play with it. You might find you are inventing a whole set of warm-ups that no-one else knows about! These examples use Baa baa, black sheep to demonstrate.

Tactics

• Sing and learn your chosen song. Concentrate first on pitches and rhythms, then on quality of diction and sound.

• Now sing the tune using 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for words. This is great for the concentration and working the brain!

• Try counting in different languages too. We\'ve used French as an example.

• Sing through the song to the five vowel sounds, ‘A’, ‘E’, ‘I’, ‘O’ and ‘U’.

• Or, you could sing to the whole alphabet!

• Sing the song short and detached (staccato) all the way through. Concentrate on keeping it well in tune and make sure it isn’t rushed!

• See who has got really impressive breath control – try breathing only at the ends of phrases (i.e. after ‘wool’, ‘full’ ‘dame’ and ‘lane’. Keep the whole thing as smooth (legato) as possible.

• Split the class into two teams and have them sing alternate bars. Compete to see which team is really listening and concentrating!

Extended activities

• Use different numbers, instead of counting one to five, count one to three or one to ten.

• Experiment with different dynamics (eg. loud or soft).

• Try out other nursery rhymes. Some examples from the Song Bank are: Frére Jacques, London’s burning, Three blind mice and Hickory dickory dock.