Children learning to sing in everyday family life in minority world homes

Abstract

In this chapter we adopt an anthropological perspective to explain the capacities young children ‎possess, which enable them to learn to sing through participation in everyday, family activities. ‎We then present recent research that has explored young children’s singing practices in family life ‎at home, organizing these practices into four types: sing-along, sociable, solitary and smooth-‎running. Although these descriptions are confined to one type of contemporary, minority world ‎childhood, they may illuminate similar processes in the lives of children beyond this narrow ‎demographic and may suggest some additional approaches to singing in educational ‎practice‎