 Singing games were beloved of 19th century collectors who often believed that they preserved evidence of ancient rituals. They were also seized on by those who imagine and lament a decline in children's traditional games. Singing games have been revived a number of times, for instance in the late 19th and late 20th centuries. Nowadays, tend to be taught by adults, whether in the playground, in singing lessons, in children's parties or via children's television programs. The classic singing games were generally performed by girls, though boys sometimes joined in. Many involved circling, whilst holding hands, and had a courtship or marriage element. Though the older singing games, including Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses and In-N-Out-the-Dusty-Blue-Bales, form a part of this repertoire, they are mainly found among children in the first few years of primary school. As children grow older, more of their singing games can be traced to their media cultures, ranging from cheerleading, handshakes and pop-song routines to elaborate restagings of routines from their favourite musicals. The opus recorded children performing songs of the pop stars of the day from Bob Merrill's She Wears Red Feathers to Lena Zavaroni's Ma, She's Making Eyes at Me to Abba. I mean her recent examples of children using songs and dances from Beyoncé, High School Musical and Mamma Mia. Singing popular songs in groups of two or more was already well known in the 1960s, and it's a popular activity on today's playgrounds. Sometimes this is accompanied by dance moves, either made up by the children themselves, or increasingly copying routines seen in films, music videos or learnt in dance classes. Boys and girls both engage enthusiastically with this kind of play, girls often showing a preference for mainstream pop and boy bands, while boys tend to follow street dance forms and male performers such as Michael Jackson and the dance group Diversity, which won the TV show Britain's Got Talent in 2009. A casual adult observer might suppose that children are simply mimicking routines they've seen in the media. But the picture's more complicated than that. They very often combine elements of dance, gesture, music and words from different sources, blending them into one routine. They may also learn these routines from each other, or from parents, siblings and cousins, rather than directly from the media. In some ways then, media-based songs and dances can be passed in the same kind of way as a folk song or folk dance. Such activities clearly contribute to social development and the gradual building of identity, but they're also undertaken for all the reasons adults perform music, song and dance, for the sensory, aesthetic and intellectual interest involved and the sheer pleasure of performance.