10 Best Singing Games to Have Kids Use Their Voice

Top 10 Singing Games

Singing Games are based on a particular verse or an entire rhyme, usually accompanied by a set of actions and movements. There can be different types of singing games, like starting songs, circle dances, clapping games or catching games among others.

Here we have collected the best singing games for free download, including their lyrics in PDF.

Table of Contents

Top 10 Singing Games

1.

Girls & Boys Come Out to Play

“Girls and Boys Come Out To Play” is a very old English song for children, as it appears in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (London, 1744), the earliest collection of English-language nursery rhymes. Refers to the time when most children had to work and there was little time for play. In fact, it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that education started being considered as absolutely necessary for all children (not only for kids of well-off families). It was when the custom for children to help their parents on the land during the day and play only in the afternoon started to disappear.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

2.

Oranges and Lemons

“Oranges and Lemons” is a nursery rhyme and one of the most popular singing games. The text cites, through their bells who are supposed to talk to each other, several churches of London. The first of them, St. Clement, could be referring to the church of St. Clement Danes or St. Clement Eastcheap, close to which there is a market of citrus fruits. The bells of St. Clement Danes are today tuned to the melody of the rhyme. The last stanza appears for the first time in James Orchard Halliwell’s collection of English Nursery Rhymes, in 1840’s, while in earlier versions it was absent.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

3.

The Muffin Man

“The Muffin Man” is a nursery rhyme first recorded around 1820. The lyrics refer to a muffin man who probably delivered his product, as it was accustomed in the Victorian era, and came from Drury Lane, a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

4.

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush

“Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush” is is an English language nursery rhyme and singing game. It is also often titled “Mulberry Bush” or “This is the Way”. This rhyme is a singing game, which means it is associated with a set of actions and movements which help children to learn corresponding activities. The tune of the song is the same as the one of “Wheels on the bus”.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

5.

Ring a Ring o’ Roses

Known as “Ring Around the Rosie” in the United States, this is a popular English playground singing game.

Concerning the meaning of lyrics and game, folklorists believe they are of pagan origins, while more recent readings, which appeared in the mid-twentieth century, associate the context with the Great Plague which happened in England in 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of the Black Death in England – although this is still considered speculation.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

6.

London Bridge is Falling Down

“London Bridge Is Falling Down” is a traditional nursery rhyme whose earliest known records are from the 17th century. The song recounts the attempts to repair the bridge of London. The melody probably comes from a medieval theme, but its modern version formed in the late 19th century.Matilda of Scotland, Henry I’s consort, and Eleanor of Provence, consort of Henry III,  had the responsibility of building or repairing works on early 11th and 13th century respectively and are two of the candidates for the “fair lady” of the chorus.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

7.

Pat-a-Cake

“Pat-a-cake” is one of the oldest and most widely known surviving English nursery rhymes, as well as a clapping game. The first recorded version appears in “The Campaigners”, a play written by Thomas D’Urfey in 1698, where the lyrics of the rhyme are sung by a nurse. The next appearance is in “Mother Goose’s Melody” (c. 1765). Marking pastry or baked goods with an identifiable mark may stem from a time when households that did not own an oven of their own could have brought their items to a local baker or bake house. Marking the pastry would have been a way to ensure the return of the proper item.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

8.

The Farmer in the Dell

“The Farmer in the Dell” is a nursery rhyme and singing game. The German song “Es fuhr ein Bau’r ins Holz” seems to be the same rhyme, despite the different plot of the story, and it was first recorded in Germany in 1826. It was probably immigrants that brought it to North America.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

9.

Mrs. Macaroni

“Mrs. Macaroni” is a popular nursery rhyme and singing game from England.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

10.

Pop! Goes the Weasel

In Britain, “Pop! Goes the Weasel” has been played as a children’s game since at least the late 19th century. That would look like a common story if only this rhyme (with lyrics of a vague meaning) hadn’t started to become popular as “an old English dance” performed on stage and in dance-halls according to a music sheet acquired by the British Library in 1853.

Click here or on the following button for free printable lyrics and instrumental download.

Singing Games Video Playlist

Watch all the songs of this article in this video playlist:

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This Post Has One Comment

  1. Mustapha Issaka

    Please I want to know the forms of game songs

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