Nursery rhymes play an important role in early childhood development and education. As well as being fun they are excellent teaching tools: nursery rhymes and children’s songs boost vocabulary and language development, they help children to develop literacy skills, they provide a fun way to support early numeracy skills, nursery rhymes help children to develop social, physical and emotional skills.
“Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.” – Mem Fox
Every year in November, schools around the world celebrate Nursery Rhymes Week. This is treasured event here at BSB and our Early Years always join in with enthusiasm.
In Reception Classes,
- The children are learning a new rhyme every day then join in with adult directed or independent activities related to the rhyme.
- They have made mice for the 3 Blind Mice, they ordered numbers to put on their clocks for Hickory Dickory Dock and stars for Twinkle Twinkle.
In Nursery Classes, each area of the unit was setup as a different nursery rhyme:
- In our Maths area all week, we’ve had children coming in to make some Hickory Dickory Clocks! We’ve been practicing our cutting skills by cutting the numbers out and then gluing them on top of the matching numbers to make our very own clocks which we can take home.
- Our Construction area has also been turned into a farm area for the week, full of Old McDonald’s animals and have fun learning about different animals.
- In the Creative area we made some Twinkle Twinkle Little Star magic wands, some Baa Baa Black Sheep on paper plates, as well as Winding the Bobbin Up using cardboard bobbins and wool! The children have also enjoyed making walls for Humpty Dumpty – a hard-boiled egg - to (hopefully not) fall from!
- In our Painting area we have also been painting with the runaway spoons from the famous Hey Diddle Diddle rhyme. After singing and Incy Wincy Spider and learning all the actions to the song, we made our own Incy Wincy Spiders from card and colourful pipe cleaners. Our colourful spiders now decorate our reading wall.
- In our Sand area the children have been using their imaginations to make yummy patty sand cakes. They’re a bit dry but the children have had lots of fun making them.
In Teddies Classes,
- Each teacher and Teaching Assistant have chosen a rhyme to teach the children and throughout the day.
- Every time they interact with the children, they sing the rhymes and do some actions to match the song.
Updates from Mihaela Chesaru
Nursery Teacher, Head of EYFS
