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Author: Jen
Do Nursery Rhymes help our children?
How do Nursery Rhymes help our children learn?
Do nursery rhymes help your child to learn?
I’ll answer this question quickly. Nursery rhymes help our children learn so many things!
Tell the truth, how many times have you sung ‘Incy wincy spider’ in your lifetime? If you’re a parent, it probably feels like the rhyme is permanently playing in the back of your head! There’s bound to be at least one that makes you think ‘If I never hear that one again, it’ll be too soon!’
Firstly, I completely know the feeling (I was leading Nursery when the whole Baby Shark craze happened. Every single child wanted nothing more than to listen to that song on repeat all day long. I honestly think it’s still the sound track to my dreams!).
However, while we may get sick of them sometimes, singing nursery rhymes is one of the best things you can do to help your child develop reading skills.
Did you know that the number of nursery rhymes a child knows has an impact on how well they read when they’re older?
“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.’
Below I’ve broken down how nursery rhymes help into sections and a few ways you can make them more engaging for your child, and less repetitive for you!
How do nursery rhymes help?
When our children are very young, their attention spans are tiny. Sitting and ‘learning’ for prolonged periods of time just isn’t possible for them (even when they reach year 1 their attention spans only stretch to around 15 minutes!). Nursery rhymes offer short, bite-sized bursts of essentially ‘intensive learning’. Repetition of these rhymes also helps children develop their working memory. So those thousand repetitions of Twinkle Twinkle are actually hugely valuable!
They help children develop key skills and can inspire open-ended play where our kids can learn even more, following their own interests!
Language and communication skills
Starting from before birth children start to acquire language by listening to those around them. Nursery rhymes help by:
- engaging their listening skills and helps them focus on the rhythm, helping them develop an understanding of language and speech patterns.
- Saying nursery rhymes help children to develop their mouth and tongue muscles, helping them to say the sounds correctly.
- Increases vocabulary with words our children may not regularly hear (such as spout in incy wincy spider).
- Acting out the nursery rhymes helps children recognise and remember words they haven’t come across before (including things like directional words (up above in Twinkle Twinkle)
Social skills and Understanding the world
Nursery rhymes help to develop social skills, from working in pairs (row your boat), to recognising humour (animal fair), knowing nursery rhymes can help your child interact with others and provide comfort to themselves when they’re in uncomfortable situations.
- Nursery rhymes are a staple, they can be sung anywhere and most people know them.
- The connection between rhythm, the words and actions can make these rhymes a great group activity. Children work as a group and create a sense of belonging.
- Using rhymes can build connections between the person singing and the child, it can be incredibly soothing for your child to listen to you sing (even if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket!)
- It’s a good way to build connections between multiple generations. We’re still singing the same nursery rhymes our Grandparents sang!
Literacy skills
As I said above, nursery rhymes have been linked to reading skills and development, and it’s easy to see why! Nursery rhymes teach children so many skills that have a direct impact on reading.
- They develop listening skills and sound recognition, helping children to hear sounds in words.
- Introduce rhyming words, enabling children to listen to word endings and begin to link words that sound similar.
- Story structure – Beginning, middle and end of stories (like Little Miss Muffet)
- They introduce alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoeia and imagery.
- Recognising the rhythm of the rhymes, which helps children work out words when they start reading.
How can you make nursery rhymes more engaging for your child and less repetitive for you?
- Sing slowly and clearly
- Include actions and expression – this helps your child develop their fine and gross motor skills, making writing easier!
- Involve your child – miss words at the end of lines and see if you child can fill in the blanks. When your child is good at this, you could change the word and see if your child can come up with a fitting rhyming word.
- Encourage your child to find things in the environment to help them
- Get your child to act out the nursery rhymes. This helps children develop their imagination and creativity and link actions to words.
- Sing a broader range of nursery rhymes!
If you’re anything like me, the same few get stuck in your head and you can’t for the life of you think of any others. That’s why I’ve put together a list of nursery rhymes that can be found here – Nursery rhyme master list – that includes audios for you to listen to (great if you particularly hate singing!).
If you want to find out more about how to help your little one develop reading skills before they start school, you can download my free activities here – 10 reading activities before ABC – and sign up to my mailing list to get my weekly newsletter that includes additional tips and tricks to help with reading!
If you want to support your child further and get more individualised support for both you and your child, check out the Raising Readers Community, where you can learn all about teaching the pillars of reading, how to ensure you’re getting the most out of reading with your child, and how to fit learning into your day with no extra preparation needed from you. Even just a 3 minute activity a day makes a huge difference. Check it out!
Learn to read – 10 listening games that will help your child
10 Listening Games
that will help your child learn to read
Want some fun and easy activities that will help your child learn to listen? Below are 10 activities you can do with your child that will not only develop listening, but also skills that will help your child learn to read!
Why listening skills help children learn to read
Before your child can learn to read, they need to build several foundational skills. Reading involves hearing, distinguishing, and blending small units of sound. Essentially, your child needs to be able to listen in order to read!
Now, I can’t promise your child will always listen to you (I don’t think anyone in the world could promise that!), but I’ve come up with 6 games you can play with your child that will also help them develop their social skills, make sense of the world around them and build their vocabulary.
Playing one of these games for just 5 to 10 minutes each day can make a massive difference to your little one’s ability to listen and concentrate.
10 listening games that will help your child learn to read
1. Sound hunt
I like to do this one when on a walk but it could be done inside just as easily. Encourage your child to listen for as many things as they can, and tell you what they hear. If you have an older child, get them to describe it and add details. If you’re doing this on a walk, you could do it each day and see how the sounds change. It can be fun to use a piece of paper to record everything you hear, but it’s not necessary.
2. Red light Green Light
A great game to play outside. Tell your child that they’re going to pretend to be a car. When you say ‘red light’ they need to stop, like a car at the traffic lights. When you say ‘green light’ they can run again.
Get your child to run around and periodically shout red/green light. This is great for multi directional attention as your child has to concentrate on where they’re going as well as listening to you. It also helps them burn some energy, which is never a bad thing!
This game could also be played with music (Musical statues) which would require your child to listen to something different. This can be great for encouraging children to understand the rhythm in music too! (There’s always that one moment when it’s gone quiet but you haven’t paused the music!)
3. What sound?
Children love this game as it involves being blindfolded! I find using an eye mask is the best way to play this game, but if you don’t have that you could always use a scarf or just get your child to cover their eyes (make sure they’re not peaking though!)
Get them to listen very carefully and then make a sound in your house. It could be ringing the doorbell, running water from the tap, or turning on a light. Encourage your child to name the sound you just made. This helps them identify the world around them and can help if your little one is nervous of noises in the night too, as they may find it easier to identify them!
You could then switch roles (if you have nerves of steel and trust your child to be sensible while you’re blindfolded!) and get your child to make a noise for you to identify.
4. I spy
I spy is one of my all time favourite games for kids because it can be used in so many different ways! The classic game is when you spy something that begins with a certain letter (I spy with my little eye, something beginning with S), but you can adapt it to be a listening game too.
Instead of saying a letter, describe what you’re seeing. Your child needs to listen to what you’re saying and see if they can guess what it is. This builds vocabulary and pattern recognition as well as listening skills as your child has to make sense of what you’re saying and match it to what they’re seeing.
I spy with my little eye, something that is green and has leaves.
With this example, it could be a bush or a tree, or a plant. You could keep giving more a more detailed description until your child works it out.
5. Simon Says
Another old favourite, you probably played this at school when your teacher needed a small break (I know I certainly used it like that!). It’s fantastic at getting children to concentrate on what you’re saying. They need to work out whether they should follow the instruction and what they need to do.
Explain to your child that you’re going to give them some instructions, but they should only do it if they hear the phrase ‘Simon says’.
- Simon says touch your nose (your child touches their nose)
- Touch your nose (if your child touches their nose, say, ‘oops! I didn’t say, Simon Says!’)
This can be a hard one for children to understand at first, so don’t worry if they don’t get it straight away. Once they get the hang of it it often results in lots of giggling, particularly if you can get other family members involved and they get it wrong! As your child gets more used to this game, you could start to give more detailed instructions, such as ‘Simon says jump for 10 seconds’, or ‘touch your right ear with your right hand’.
6. Copy cat game
Exactly like it sounds, to play this game, you do something and your child copies you! This could be sentences or words, or actions. For example, you could clap a rhythm, jump around the room, or stick out your tongue, and your child has to copy you. To make it a listening game, all you need to do is add sounds. Make sounds by drumming, stamping, or using your voice and encourage your child to copy, exactly as you did it. This helps them listen closely to what you are doing and have a go themselves. Not only does this build listening skills, but vocal skills too, which will help them to blend together sounds to make words later on!
7. Did I get it?
Similar to the previous game, this one asks your child to take the lead. You could tell them they need to be the parent or the teacher and you’re going to practice listening to them.
Ask the child to tell you something to say. Model listening carefully to your child and copy what they said.
- Child: Pretty pink unicorn
- You: Pretty pink unicorn
Then ask your child if you got it right. When they’ve had a few goes at this, start getting your part a bit wrong.
- Child: cat on the table
- You: cat on the mat
Ask your child if you got it right. Encourage them to say what you got wrong. I’ve found most children love correcting adults and it helps them listen carefully to what you say!
8. The Whisper Game
This is the only game that requires more than two people to play. It could be done at the dinner table the the whole family is together. Start by telling your little one a word and get them to whisper it to the next person. The last person to hear the word tells the whole table. See how much it’s changed!
To make it harder, you could try whispering short phrases or even whole sentences! The better everyone around the table listens (I’m looking at you, Uncle Jim!) the better the phrase will come out again. And if it goes wrong, it generally ends in giggles and laughter, so that’s good too!
9. Drawing Instructions
All you need is a paper and pencil for this game. Sit your child down and give them instructions on what to draw. If your child is little, start with very simple instructions.
- Draw a circle.
- Put a smily face in it.
If your child is a bit older, you could include descriptive words and time words as well to make it a bit harder.
- Draw a large circle.
- Put two small circles inside it, next to each other.
- Draw a curved line near the bottom of the circle.
It doesn’t matter how the picture turns out, only that your child followed the instructions! I love playing this game in my classroom and seeing how each child has interpreted my instructions differently. We can make some really amazing pieces of abstract art that way!
10. Praise good listening
Okay, so this final one isn’t so much a game as it is a habit, but it’s the most valuable one. When they’ve done a good job at listening, try to use specific praise. This lets your child know exactly what they did that you liked and makes them more likely to try to do it again.
Try phrases like:
- Well done for listening carefully to the instructions.
- You concentrated really hard on the sounds, that’s brilliant!
- What good listening you did today!
I hope you’ve found these games helpful and discovered some new ways to encourage listening in your child. Feel free to comment below with your favourite game or any other games you love playing! You can get even more games and activities to help your child develop reading skills by downloading my free pdf – 10 reading activities before ABC
Parents, you are the Primary Educator
Why did I quit my teaching job and risk it all to start my own business?
When I first started teaching, I was in a Reception class with the most wonderful children and parents. The parents were so engaged with their children’s learning, and were so keen to help their children however they could. But they didn’t know how.So I started running ‘homework clubs’ where parents would come in with their children and see how I taught maths and phonics so that the parents could do the same at home.The impact was incredible. Children who had struggled before, even with all of the support I offered, suddenly flew. One girl went from being a concern to being the top reader in her class. And it was all because I had equipped the parents with the knowledge they needed to help.It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to create my course ‘Before ABC’.That was 7 years ago now, but Covid has made it even more important that parents have the skills and knowledge that they need to help their children. And I have the knowledge. So I quit my job to focus on something even more important than teaching children (though I still do this in a phonics and reading specialist capacity), teaching parents.You are the reason your child will succeed. Your impact on your child is phenomenal. And I want to help.If you want to support your child and get more individualised support for both you and your family, check out my course – Curious to Confident – where you can learn about the pillars of reading, become confident that you know where your child is in their reading journey, how to ensure you’re getting the most out of reading with your child, and how to fit learning into your day with no extra preparation needed from you. Click the picture to check it out!
