For a 100 days ukulele challenge, I created a collection of fun songs for singalongs with video tutorials. Start reading here to learn about the challenge and about Rise Up Singing, or skip straight to the song list.

Introduction

Cynthia Lin organizes a “100 days of ukulele” challenge, starting each year in March. Participants are encouraged to record a video every day of themselves playing ukulele and post it for the community to see. (Find it on Facebook, or her Patreon or on Instagram or YouTube using #100DaysUke2025.) The goal is to commit to a practice and daily work on your skills. In 2025, I gave myself the challenge of playing lots of new songs, using each to practice and strengthen my: chord changes, choosing the best strum pattern and/or building my skills at finger picking. I figured I might as well record these as tutorials that I can share with others.

I chose to work with songs from the group singing book Rise Up Singing (Amazon affiliate link, or buy directly from the publisher). There are 1200 songs in the book! I chose some of my favorites / things I think may be commonly sung. Many of them also appear in the Daily Ukulele Songbook. (Amazon, publisher) or in the free songbooks for the Eastside Ukulele Players.

Most of my videos include chord diagrams. They contain some of the lyrics, and some contain info on how the chords align with the lyrics. If I don’t have all the lyrics and chords in the video, I link to where you can find them. I do strongly encourage you to support the authors/publishers of Rise Up Singing and Daily Ukulele and honor their copyright by purchasing your own copy of each book. If you do singalongs in a group, purchase enough copies of the book for everyone in the group.

Rise Up Singing

Rise Up is a folk music singalong book, first published in 1988. It contains 1200 songs, sorted into 35 categories, well indexed by title, artist, and subject. For sheer number of songs, it’s incredible! In order to fit that many songs into a compact, affordable book, this is not full sheet music. It just includes the lyrics and chords, not the melodies, so you either need to know the song, or look for a recording online to learn it.

I love this book!

And… as a beginning musician, it was really hard for me to use it, even for songs that I knew.

Here’s a sample song. So the “C – F G /” means that for the first line of lyrics, you’ll play C, continue playing C, then F, then G. You have to figure out for yourself when to switch from one to the other. Then you’ll see how it calls out the chords (but not the timing) for the second and third lines of the lyrice, then you’ll see for the fourth line, it just says 2nd. That means you play the second pattern.

There’s a lot of thinking involved as you play, which was hard for me when I started. So, I searched online for other versions that called out how the chords and lyrics align, and are in the same key. (So, for Rocky Mountain High, to match the Rise Up Singing version, you’re looking for key of C – it would begin on C, then F, then G. Ironically, it’s actually quite hard to find this song in C!) But here is one example:

For most common songs, you’ll find many workable chord sheets.

Song List

Here’s a list of all the recordings I did, in alphabetical order. Some are full tutorials, some are play-throughs of the full song, some just snippets… whatever I was able to complete on that particular day of the challenge, depending on my other commitments. I starred the easier songs for beginners.

• Amazing Grace
• Back Home Again
• Barrett’s Privateers
• Blowin in the Wind *
• The Boxer
• The Cat Came Back
• City of New Orleans
• Come and Go With Me
• Day-O (Banana Boat Song)
• Do-Re-Mi
• Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay
• Drivin’ My Life Away (not in Rise Up)
• Drunken Sailor *
• Edelweiss
• Everything Possible
• Fire and Rain
• Freight Train *
• Garden Song – Inch by Inch
• Goodnight Irene
• He’s Got the Whole World *
• Here Comes the Sun
• Homeward Bound
• House of the Rising Sun
• How Can I Keep from Singing
• If I Only Had a Brain
• I’ll Fly Away *
• Imagine
• I’ve Been Working on the Railroad
• Jamaica Farewell *
• John B. Sails
• King of the Road *
• Kumbaya *
• Lean On Me
• Let It Be
• Let’s Get Together
• Love Grows One by One
• Magic Penny *
• Mary Ellen Carter
• May there always be sunshine *
• Moonshadow
• Morningtown Ride *
• MTA *
• My Favorite Things
• Nova Scotia Farewell
• One of these Things (from Sesame St – not in Rise Up)
• Over in the Meadow
• Peace Like a River
• Puff the Magic Dragon
• Rambling Rover
• Ripple
• Rocky Mountain High
• Roll On Columbia (tune: Good Night Irene)
• Shake My Sillies Out *
• Shenandoah
• Ship Titanic (printable lyrics)
• Take Me Home Country Roads
• Teach Your Children Well
• This Land is Your Land * (printable lyrics)
• Those Were the Days in D (it’s in E in Rise Up)
• Today
• Turn Turn Turn
• Up On the Roof
• Wade in the Water *
• Waltzing Matilda
• Water is Wide
• We Shall Overcome
• When the Saints Go Marching In *
• Will the Circle be Unbroken *
• Yellow Submarine
• Yesterday
• You Are My Sunshine *
• You Can Be an Inventor (not in Rise Up)
• You’ve Got a Friend

Simple Children’s Songs

I also have a series of videos made for preschool teachers or children’s librarians, using just a few simple chords on the uke to play these songs:

• using C and F – Row Your Boat, Brother John
• C7 and F – Skip to my Lou, Mulberry Bush, More We Get Together, etc.
• C and G – Open Shut Them, Ring Around the Rosie, Clean Up
• C and G7 – London Bridge, Looby Loo, Peekaboo
• C, F, G7 – Twinkle, ABC, You are My Sunshine, Happy Bday, and more
• C, F, G – If You’re Happy, Teapot, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Teddy Bear
• D7, C, G – Old McDonald, Thumbkin, Coming Round the Mountain,
• More Chords and Songs: Dm – Muffin Man; D and A7 – Bingo, A and E7 – Speckled Frogs, Em and B7 – Ants Go Marching; Am – Over in the Meadow