Nursery Rhymes & Fingerplays
Nursery Rhymes & Fingerplays
Rhythmic language provides opportunities for children to enjoy the sounds of language. Rhyming is when the ending parts of two words sound the same or nearly the same. Rhyming teaches children the sound of the language and other important skills such as, phonological awareness, which is the ability to notice and work with the sounds in language. Rhymes are easy for children to remember because of the repetition and rhythm. Children notice similarities and differences in sounds patterns as they say rhymes and chants over and over and they learn new vocabulary words.
Work on counting to 5 by singing “5 Little Ducks” with Ms. Morgan. You can ask your child, “How many ducks are left?” and have them answer or count the ducks to give an answer. This song is also a great way to teach the concepts of happy and sad. Have your child practice making those facial expressions with you.
This is a great children’s nursery rhyme to talk about a rainy day and what happens to one person. It contains signs for words that your child can imitate with or without speaking the words. The nursery rhyme can be repeated several times, practicing signs, rhyming words and vocabulary (sleeping, man, old, head, morning, raining, snoring).
This is a song about 5 spotted frogs sitting on a log and jumping into some water. The song teaches number concepts (counting to 5), vocabulary (frog, log, jumped, bugs, pool) and descriptor words (green, cool, speckled, wet). Your child can do the hand gestures for “yum, yum” and hold up the number of frogs left with their fingers. You can do this song at home with your child either as shown in the video with a container or at bathtime. If you don’t have frogs, you can change the words and use any animal and talk about what they would eat. You can also talk about wet and dry and how the animals are able to get dry
In this video, we sing a song and use a finger puppet with five monkeys on it. As we sing each verse of the song, we take away one monkey. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...until there are no more monkeys swinging in the tree! Can you watch the video at home and sing along with us? This is a counting and rhyming song. Can you count down from 5 to 1? Can you listen for any rhyming words in the song? Have fun singing, counting, and rhyming at home!
Have you ever been fishing? Did you catch a fish? Join Ms. Jennifer and Ms. Lisa in this fun nursery rhyme about catching a fish. This is a great way to practice counting!
Learn the sign language to the classic nursery rhyme: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Practice your sign language when singing along to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. This is a great nursery rhyme to sing at night when watching the stars for just before bedtime!
The repetition in “If You’re Happy and You Know It” helps teach vocabulary and action words in a fun manner. This song teaches action words such as “clap, touch, stomp.” Imitating actions is a great way to ensure that your child is understanding action words and emotions (happy, sad, mad). You can change the song to work on body parts, emotions, and other actions. For example “If you’re sad and you know it make a frown” or “If you’re mad and you know it take a deep breath.”
This is a fun finger play that works on number skills. It’s about some mice and a hungry cat.
Kids will have a lot of fun showing off their counting skills with this fingerplay at the dinner table!
This is a nursery rhyme for children. This rhyme discusses a determined spider that climbs up a waterspout. Rain falls and washes the spider down the spout. The weather changes and he climbs up the spout again. Vocabulary words and their signs taught include: spider, water, rain, sun, again. Children often enjoy repeating the rhyme and doing the signs or hand gestures. Repeating the rhyme increases their vocabulary skills.
This is a fun nursery rhyme to act out when making cookies or eating them!
Building a snowman is so much fun! Unfortunately, when the sun comes out, the snowman will melt. In this fingerplay, 5 little snowmen melt under the hot sun.
This familiar song emphasizes rhyming words like “goose” and “moose.” Sing along and see if you can remember the rhyming words.
The “Wheels on the Bus” is a great song for teaching vocabulary, concepts (open/close, loud/quiet), and everyday sounds. This song teaches part of a whole items (wipers, doors, wheels) and names of people. (driver, baby, mommy). It also teaches children to imitate actions such as “round and round” and the sounds that accompany some of the actions (shhh, shhh, shhh and swish, swish, swish”. You can even add your own parts to the song (e.g., engine goes zoom, dog goes woof). You can also practice wh-questions. For example “What do the doors do?” and “What did the baby sound like? Was the baby loud or quiet?”