Free · in the browser · nothing leaves the phone
Voice Rocket
A singing game for the phone or the classroom whiteboard: sing like a siren, slowly up and back down, and the rocket flies with your voice through the stars. After five seconds the flight becomes three notes.
When the ambulance goes by, I howl along, up and down. Here a rocket flies along with you.Sing an Oooh, up and down.
Your flight sounds like this
The microphone turns on when you tap, listens for a few seconds and turns off again. Nothing is recorded or sent.
How to play the Voice Rocket
Tap Tap and take off and sing one long Oooh or Wheee that slides like a siren: slowly up, then back down. A higher voice lifts the rocket, a lower one lets it sink. The flight starts the moment the rocket hears the voice and lasts five seconds; Land ends it sooner.
The sky is measured from the note the child starts on: a little room below, a comfortable glide above. So a small voice fills the whole sky, and nobody has to reach for a high note. There is nothing to hit, nothing to win and no score. The rocket goes where the voice goes, and every flight counts.
Then the microphone closes and the flight becomes three notes: its lowest, one in the middle and its highest, rounded to notes that sound good together (a major pentatonic over the low one). The glockenspiel plays them, and each name lights up as its note rings. In Brumm Kids a beat joins in, and the child can sing a whole tune over them.
Rocket games for two or for a group
Rollercoaster: One of you draws a rollercoaster in the air with a finger, the other sings it, and the rocket flies it.
Copy the trail: After landing, the dotted trail stays in the sky. The next child looks at it, taps, and flies the same shape from memory; the old trail disappears when the new flight starts. Because the sky starts from each child's own first note, a deep voice and a high one can fly the same shape.
Soft landing: Start up high in a light voice, wherever that is comfortable, and glide the rocket down to the ground as gently as you can.
What is a singing game?
A singing game is a game whose rules travel in a song: a rhyme or verse that children sing while they walk in a ring, clap, chase, choose or guess. Most are older than anyone can trace and pass from child to child in the playground; Iona and Peter Opie spent decades collecting them from British children (The Singing Game, 1985). Most are cooperative rather than competitive: the song decides who goes next, not who wins.
The same words also mean a video game you sing into: karaoke games that score pitch and timing, and smaller games where the voice moves something on the screen. The Voice Rocket is one of those, without the score.
Types of singing games for kids, with one of each to try
| Kind | How it works | Try |
|---|---|---|
| Finger play or action song | The hands or the whole body act out what the song says, sitting or standing. | Incy Wincy Spider, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, from 2 |
| Circle game | Everyone walks in a ring and sings; the last line says what happens. | Ring a Ring o' Roses (all fall down), from 3 |
| Choosing game | The ring sings, and the child in the middle picks the next one for the next verse. | The Farmer in the Dell, from 4 |
| Arch or catching game | Two children make an arch, the line walks under it, and the arch comes down on the last word. | London Bridge Is Falling Down, from 4 |
| Hiding and guessing | One child looks for a hidden object; the class sings louder as the child gets close and softer as they move away. | Lucy Locket, from 5 |
| Echo, call and response | A leader sings a line, the group sings it back. | Charlie Over the Ocean, from 5 |
| Passing game | Sitting in a circle, everyone passes a stone or beanbag on the beat. | Obwisana (a stone-passing game from Ghana), from 5 |
| Clapping game | Two partners clap a pattern to a chanted rhyme, faster each round. | Miss Mary Mack, from 6 |
| Skipping rhyme | Chanted while one child jumps a turning rope, and the words say what to do. | Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, Turn Around, from 6 |
| Voice on a screen | The microphone reads the pitch and something moves with it. | The Voice Rocket above, from 4 |
| Karaoke game | You sing along with a song and the game scores pitch and timing. | Let's Sing (a new edition each year, on Switch, PlayStation and Xbox as of 2026); on the Wii it was We Sing and Disney Sing It; SingStar (PlayStation) is no longer sold. Older children and grown-ups. |
The traditional games with their words and rules, nobody out: singing games for kids.
Singing games with a microphone, online and free
Most singing games in a browser work the same way: the microphone hears the voice, and the page measures its pitch, how fast the sound vibrates, many times a second. The Voice Rocket reads the last quarter second every 70 milliseconds and moves the rocket to it. A karaoke game does the same, then compares the pitch with the song's written notes, and that comparison becomes the score.
For children under about eight, a game that follows the voice is the kinder kind: there is no wrong note to land on, so a child who can't yet match a pitch still plays the whole game. Before a child plays any singing game with a microphone, check four things: it runs without an account, the microphone switches on only when the child taps, nothing is uploaded, and a round is short. The Voice Rocket does all four, and the sound never leaves the phone.
Other free singing games in the browser: AllKaraoke.party is SingStar-style karaoke with thousands of grown-up songs and a score; Sing & Snack (PitchHighway) has you hold the note under each fruit, with lives and a score; Theta Music Trainer's Vocal Match trains pitch matching for older singers, needs headphones and keeps scores in an account; in Blob Opera (Google Arts & Culture) you drag singing blobs and don't sing yourself.
Looking for a different singing game? In My Singing Monsters (and its prequel Dawn of Fire), a free phone game, you breed monsters that each sing one part of a song; you don't sing yourself. The reverse singing game is a party game: an app plays a line of a song backwards, you sing what you hear, and the app reverses your recording to see whether the song comes out. The Singing Bee was a TV game show about remembering lyrics (NBC, then CMT, 2007 to 2012).
Singing games for a birthday or a family evening, no screen: hum a song and the others guess it; stop singing mid-line and the next person finishes it; sing a song everyone knows in a different voice (a whisper, a robot, a mouse). Nobody is out, and every turn is a few seconds. More like these: music games without instruments.
Playing it with a class or a group
- Put the phone or tablet where everyone can see the sky, or show it on the whiteboard. One child sings at a time, close to the device.
- While one child flies, the others draw the flight in the air with a finger. Everyone follows the pitch; only one voice needs the microphone.
- A room full of voices confuses the microphone. The others watch quietly, then the next child takes the phone.
- Three or four flights at the start of a music lesson, each followed by the whole class gliding the same shape together (after the landing, not during the flight), warm everyone's voices up for the first song. With turns, a class of 25 takes about ten minutes.
- After a flight, the class sings the three notes back together. That is the first step from gliding to singing notes.
More for a lesson: music games for the classroom and a substitute music lesson that needs no preparation.
Why a siren is a good first singing game
Before children can sing a given note, they need to find out where their voice can go. Music teachers call this vocal exploration and start it with glides: sirens, owls, ghosts, a slide whistle to copy. A glide has no wrong note. The child who still drones on one note in a song can glide perfectly well, and often finds the light, higher voice that children's songs sit in.
The rocket also shows what high and low mean. Many young children say “higher” when they mean “louder”. Here a louder voice doesn't move the rocket; a higher one does. To practise the difference with two notes, play Higher or lower.
When the songs come after: grown-ups tend to start children's songs too low, at their own speaking pitch. Songs for children of four to seven are usually set between about D and A above middle C, so start there. Once gliding is easy, the next singing games are singing one note back and echo singing a short tune.
For parents and teachers: is it good for the voice?
Gliding, letting the voice slide slowly up and down, is the warm-up choir leaders use too, and it is easy on the voice as long as nobody pushes or shouts. A flight lasts five seconds. The page never asks for the highest note, keeps no points and compares no child with another. If a voice sounds hoarse or scratchy, stop for the day.
The microphone only listens after your child taps and turns off again after the flight. The voice is read in the browser and forgotten right away: no recording, no account, nothing is sent. Good from about four to ten; a few minutes is plenty. More about Brumm Kids.
Audio: your microphone, on only after you tap. The sound is analysed in this tab and never sent. Nothing about the audio reaches the visit count.