Songs, rhymes and fingerplays

Nursery rhymes have a lot more to offer than just entertainment value. They introduce babies and children to the idea of storytelling, promote social skills and boost language development. They also lay the foundation for learning to read and spell. Generally, children who will become good readers enjoy listening to speech, storybooks and nursery rhymes.

Nursery rhymes provide bite-sized learning opportunities for young children to develop key developmental skills and can often be the trigger for hours of creative and open-ended play. They are a powerful learning source in early literacy and enable children to become interested in the rhythm and patterns of language. Consider the alliteration in “A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea”, or the onomatopoeia in “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and rhyme in “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Many nursery rhymes are also repetitive which can support the development of memory and kickstart the practice of listening and speaking.

Five easy ways to introduce rhymes into your setting:

Rhymes can be sung or chanted at any time throughout the day. They are short and quick making them easy to slot into the daily routine. Here are 5 easy ways to introduce nursery rhymes into your setting.

1. Choose a simple rhyme and use it to accompany one of your daily routines such as a walk to the playpark or a craft activity.
2. Introduce ‘Rhyme Of The Week’ and make a point of singing the rhyme 2 or 3 times each day. Most nursery rhymes take no more than 1 or 2 minutes to sing so this is any easy way to build up lots of repetition.
3. Share picture books of rhymes with your children and encourage them to talk about the characters and the events that unfold within the rhyme.

4. Put together a ‘Rhyme Bag’ for children to explore and fill it with rhyme related objects such as puppets, cookie cutters (Five Currant Buns), small world characters, a toy tea-pot and cup and saucer (Polly Put The Kettle On, I’m A Little Teapot) or rubber ducks (Five Little Ducks).

5. Create a Flash Card of lyrics for lots of different nursery rhymes and encourage staff members within your setting to learn the rhymes and look for ways to introduce them at various times of the day.