Nursery Rhyme
Problem Solving

Activity Overview

In addition to practicing the foundational skills needed for holistic literacy, we often share stories with children to help elicit practice in problem-solving and empathy. Nursery rhymes in particular are an important format of literacy that children should be exposed to, because the use of rhyme and rhythm helps children develop an ear for language, including familiarity with the sounds and syllables in words, ability to recall and memorize on demand, and understand sequencing deeper by exposure to beginning, middle, and end. Through connection to the characters in rhymes, children engage their sense of humor, awareness of others, empathic response to problems and anticipation of solutions. In this activity, students will be exposed to some classic nursery rhymes as a format for practicing what they have been learning about problem solving to help the characters in the stories.

What You Need

• Nursery Rhyme Cards

• Solution Cards

Steps

1. Introduce your student to the Nursery Rhyme Cards to help facilitate their practice of active problem-solving (or use any nursery rhyme book you have in the home).

2. Recite the rhymes with the student and stop to think, what is the problem here? How can we fix it?

3. Use the Solution Cards to identify and discuss ways to help fix the problem.

Guiding Questions

• What happened to [Jack and Jill, Humpty Humpty, Five Little Monkeys] in the story?

• How can we fix the problem?

• Has this ever happened to you? How did you fix it? Who helped you fix it?

Extensions

• Make nursery rhyme sock puppets or shadow puppets to act out and problem solve the different scenarios.