Building literacy and language skills through nursery rhymes.

Are nursery rhymes important or just old fashioned nonsense?

So many nursery rhymes, like poor old, Humpty Dumpty not making a recovery, feel  quite negative. Some, such as Three Blind Mice, no longer align with our current values; others, like Ring ‘o’ Roses, have roots in grim times. It is only reasonable to ask if they have a place in the 21st century. 

I believe they do. Not just because of fond memories of how much my children enjoyed them, but also because of what I know about learning, and research that rhyme detection scores predict progress in reading and spelling. Pre-literacy skills are the building blocks for later learning which is complex. So I am in favour of anything we can do to ease that journey for our children.

The development of a child’s literacy skills starts with language; what they hear and how they develop the use of it. When they hear nursery rhymes they hear sound, pitch, vocal inflection and the rhythm of language. The sounds come together to make words, some of which are new and add to their everyday vocabulary. Listening to sounds will help with spelling later on and the short rhymes are the foundation of the first sentences.

Nursery rhymes build recall and auditory memory with patterns and sequences which are fundamental for many aspects of academic learning that will follow many years later.  The rhymes often tell a story with a structure that will become all too familiar: beginning, a middle and an ending.

Nursery rhymes can include maths, counting up (12345 once I caught a fish alive), and down (10 in a bed and the little one said…).

Alliteration (Goosie, Goosie, Gander), onomatopoeia (Baa, Baa, Black Sheep) and imaginative imagery are introduced. My daughter invented the word ‘bumpity’ - bumpity bumpity bump down the stairs, bumpity skin, bumpity paper, bumpity road - the imagery was clear each time. 

By acting out the actions meaning is added, whether it is rowing a boat or learning where your head, shoulders, knees and toes are. Pictures are painted in the child’s head without the need for videos. 

There is physical development too, building the muscles of the mouth, making sounds that repeat. The whole body is used, helping with coordination and the expression. 

The bond between the adult and child is built as bodies move, emotions are expressed, humour is developed, turns are taken and basic social skills are introduced.

Listening comprehension is a precursor of reading comprehension and imaginations need to be fed so that they can be drawn on for writing. 

Listening for sounds helps the recall of spelling patterns and thus the decoding of words when reading, but there’s another element too. 

Nursery rhymes are a comfort. The rhythm and repetition are calming and they can invoke memories of closeness and safety. These simple rhymes can be a safe place to retreat to when child is feeling sad, lonely or bewildered.  

If you have forgotten nursery rhymes this link will remind you of the words. The rhythm will just happen naturally. https://bilingualkidspot.com/2018/04/23/popular-nursery-rhymes-for-kids-english/

It’s just under a year until the next World Nursery Rhyme week but this website is fun any day https://www.worldnurseryrhymeweek.com/ 

Squeals of delight and gorgeous giggles - memories that last.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash