Who doesn’t love a good nursery rhyme? From the older traditional ones such as Mary, Mary to more recent ones such as ‘Jonny, Jonny’ there are sure to be a selection of nursery rhymes that your child loves to sing along to. It may just seem like a fun pass time, it is quite easy to underestimate the learning potential that singing nursery rhymes hold.
Nursery rhymes ignite the brain – and the imagination. When children hear a nursery rhyme they engage with the story held within it. Often we support children in acting out the nursery rhyme, making it a fully immersive experience. Most of the time we are doing this without the support of props, costumes or pictures, and using only our bodies and our voices. This provides a rich imaginative experience for the children.
One of the fantastic things about nursery rhymes is the way they naturally contain patterns, with lots of rhyme and repetition. These embedded patterns mean that children can recall them easily and memorise them quickly. When we use nursery rhymes in our classes, we never say them just once – repetition is essential when developing recognition and memorisation in babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers.
Nursery rhymes are fantastic for the development of new language and vocabulary. As the rhymes are so repetitive and fun, children pick up new vocabulary very rapidly when they learn and sing nursery rhymes, whether it be animal names, colour names or the letters of the alphabet, the possibilities are endless. Rhyming helps children learn about rhythm in words, words that sound the same as well as practicing pitch, volume and speed of sounds. Singing nursery rhymes also aids in promoting listening and attention skills as children actively use these skills to concentrate and listen carefully to the rhyme, especially if it is a new rhyme they have never heard before.
Nursery rhyme knowledge provides an excellent foundation for later reading and writing skills. They are a great introduction to stories since many nursery rhymes contain a beginning, middle, and end, this helps children learn about sequencing. Nursery rhymes are often structured so that they tell a story, with a clear beginning, middle and end, because they are short and quite simple they allow younger children to stay engaged in the story, and to understand what is going on. This structure also helps children to understand the concept of events happening in sequence.
Following on from literacy, mathematics is very easily covered in nursery rhymes as there are many rhymes which involve counting and sequencing. Nursery rhymes are full of patterns, sequencing, numbers, and counting- forward and backward. They also discuss size, weight and other important mathematical vocabulary.
There are lots of nursery rhymes which help to develop children’s fine and gross motor skills, some of our favorites are “ring-o-ring-o-roses”, “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and “baby shark”. Although any song or rhyme can easily be made into a fun dance party if you want it to.
Nursery rhymes are familiar and can provide comfort and support children in new and potentially uncomfortable situations. Because of the connection between movement, rhythm, and words, singing these songs can be a great group activity supporting children in learning social skills from many of the rhymes. Lastly, fun nursery rhymes help children to develop their understanding of humor which is an important skill for children to develop at a young age.
For more information please feel free to contact us at [email protected], we are always happy to help!
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