One thing that many of us don’t think about when it comes to nursery rhymes is that they are a great way to teach young children some hard concepts. In fact nursery rhymes have been used in early childhood education for years because it provides young children with a fun and exciting way to learn about math, letters, opposites, position words and other important concepts.
Here are some of the things that you can teach your child by using certain nursery rhymes.
•Hickory, Dickory, Dock – opposites, position words, and time
•Jack Be Nimble – position words, Letter J, math
•Humpty Dumpty – opposites, position words, letters H D and E, color white
•Jack and Jill – letter J, opposites, position words
Here are some nursery rhyme activities that you can use to help teach your children different things.
Hickory Dickory Dock – Clock Manipulatives
•Provide each child with a paper plate and have them write or glue the correct numbers onto the “clock face”. A trick to getting the numbers spaced evenly is to have your students glue or write on the numbers 12, 6, 3, and 9 first. After that they can fill in the other numbers in the right order.
•After adding the numbers have the child add the hour and minute hand to the clock. To add the clock hands you will need to use a brad in the center of the paper plate so that the clock hands can move to different times.
Jack Be Nimble – Graphing Activity
•The first thing that you are going to need to do is to cut out a variety of candles from various colors of construction paper. How many candles you are going to be cutting out is going to depend on what numbers you are going to be working on with the child. You should not cut out more than that number of colored candles. What this means is that if you are working on the numbers 1 through 10 you should have no more than 10 candles for each color.
•You will also need to vary the number of candles that you are cutting out of each color.
•Now you need to create a graph with the numbers you are working on and the colors of the candles you have cut out.
•Now you need to graph the candles.
Humpty Dumpty – Position words
•The first thing you are going to need to do is to get a felt board to use for this activity. They can be found at toy stores or learning stores for young children.
•The next thing you need to do is to create the pieces of Humpty Dumpty out of felt. You can also buy the Humpty Dumpty set at various stores.
•Now you will use the felt board to practice the position words. What you need to do is to tell the children where to place Humpty Dumpty in relation to the wall.
Jack and Jill – Letter J
•The first thing that you are going to need to do is to cut out some kind of pail for your child out of construction paper or you can use an actual pail.
•Next you are going to want to have your child cut out a variety of things that start with the letter J. You can provide your child with photocopies of things that start with the letter J or you can have them go through old magazines and cut out the pictures that they find on their own.
•After cutting out the pictures they are going to need to glue the pictures onto the pail
