Why I Include Nursery Rhymes in Kindergarten

As I was adding this Humpty Dumpty craft to the free resource library I started wondering-do other teachers still include nursery rhymes in their daily activities. I know nursery rhymes might feel old-fashioned, but to me they’re magic, students love learning and sharing them and so much learning is happening as we recite these old gems.

Here are my top 7  reasons why I make them a regular part of our day:

1. They’re fun and easy to learn – The rhythm and rhyme make them both enjoyable to read and easy to learn by heart.  Nursery rhymes are a fantastic tool for building confidence and joy in learning.
2. They help develop phonological awareness, (the ability to hear and manipulate larger sound structures in words, such as rhymes, syllables, and onsets and rimes.)
3. They help develop phonemic awareness, (the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) within a word.)
4. They include rich language and many new unknown words, wonderful for building student language.
5. The actions that accompany some nursery rhymes are great for enhancing co-ordination and memory.  They’re also perfect for when students need a little moment of wiggle time, add them to your management regime.
6. Nursery rhymes develop students imagination with their interesting characters and vivid scenarios.
7. They can also teach basic maths concepts, such as counting and geometry.

I introduce a new nursery rhyme each week, we read it during our shared book time and quickly explore a different learning facets each day it could be rhyming words, clapping the rhythm, creating or learning actions, exploring: new words, character traits, the setting, or any literary techniques eg. alliteration.

 At the end of the week students glue a copy into their poetry book and take it home to read over the weekend with loved ones, we will follow this up with a craft, make a crown or sequencing activities to match our nursery rhyme, these will be done as one of our reading rotation activities.   I always have a box of poster size nursery rhymes and poems in my reading corner for students to read and enjoy.

If you are looking for some nursery rhyme activities I have a few you might like to take a peek at:

 FREE Humpty Dumpty craft in the resource library

For a quick and easy start to visiting nursery rhymes in your class grab my Nursery Rhyme Posters, Crowns & More pack it  includes 10 classic rhymes, each rhyme includes

• A teacher color/colour full page printable rhyme
• A student’s printable rhyme, b/w 2 copies per page.
• A larger poster-sized rhyme – print 2 pages & glue to create
• A crown / hat craft to accompany each rhyme –

Also in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store  Nursery Rhyme Time Pack 1 and Nursery Rhyme Time Pack 2 both include 5 different nursery rhymes with posters, hats and sequencing activities.