Click HERE for the Nursery Rhyme Parade Video.
Nursery Rhyme Parade
We recently celebrated the culmination of a three week PreK-3 unit on nursery rhymes with a magical parade of students dressed in costume as their favorite nursery rhyme character. What a sight to behold – the entire school, from our 18 month old students to our 5th grade seniors, joining together to commemorate the special early childhood occasion. After the parade, the students headed upstairs to the Broadcast Studio to recite their favorite nursery rhyme in front of the green screen to create a fun compilation video for their families. What could be better than a parade of Humpty Dumpties, Little Bo Peeps, and Itsy, Bitsy Spiders? Perhaps it is the early literacy and cognitive benefits reaped by these three year olds through their study of rhymes, songs and poems.
Developing Language Skills through Rhyme
Nursery rhymes help students develop an ear for the rhythm and cadence of our language. They help students acquire the pre-reading skills of hearing sounds and syllables in words and provide ample opportunities for young children to explore and identify rhyming words such as Hickory Dickory and Humpty Dumpty. Even though the rhymes may be silly like a cow jumping over a moon or an egg falling off of a wall, children learn that stories have a clear beginning, middle and end – foundational skills for future reading comprehension and writing. Vocabulary acquisition is another key benefit to nursery rhymes. Is there a better way to teach the word fetch than through Jack and Jill’s story of collecting water? Wee Willie Winkie and Miss Muffet teach young children about letters and sounds through alliteration. By learning to recite a favorite rhyme, students boost their memory skills, practice speech and articulation skills and build confidence speaking in front of others.
Cross-Curriculum Fun
The benefits of learning Nursery Rhymes extend beyond the realm of language and literacy skills and give St. James PreK-3 students fun ways to foster overall brain development. Over the past few weeks, classroom centers have used lego bricks to count and build Humpty Dumpty’s wall, numbers have been explored through Hickory Dickory Dock’s Clock, and one-to-one correspondence practiced while filling a boot with “Little People” to count exactly how many children the old woman had in her shoe. Students explored the scientific process by building walls of different heights and discussing how the height of the wall could impact Humpty Dumpty. It sure is exciting for a class of 3 year olds students to predict what will happen when a raw egg is dropped from different heights!
Nursery Rhyme Video
Our PK-3 classrooms have been filled with lively hands-on, play-based learning centered around a study of time-honored Nursery Rhymes and Songs. As you enjoy the Nursery Rhyme video from the cutest Nursery Rhyme characters you’ve ever seen, appreciate all the learning and brain development that occurred while these precious children were having fun. All in a day’s work in a PK-3 classroom.
