Sixteen key nursery rhymes are part of our literacy toolkit!
Rhymes are fantastic vocabulary boosters. They often feature a pleasing rhythmic pattern and simple repetitive phrases that babies and young children find easy to remember and repeat. In order to develop their phonological awareness, children need to be repeatedly exposed to spoken language and nursery rhymes provide the perfect way to do this. They also support the development of language structure in young children, helping them gain the skills and confidence to express themselves.
In our Foundation Stage, colleagues develop children’s communication and language through singing songs and nursery rhymes. We sing daily as a group and our teachers and practitioners sing with the children during play based learning. For example, if it is raining outside we may start to sing, “It’s raining, it’s pouring…..”.
We love to experiment and play with musical instruments as well as sing. Tuning into the different sounds that instruments make trains children to listen carefully to sounds also supporting their phonological awareness. We use props alongside our singing, allowing children to develop creative thinking and physical skills. Number songs are also an important part of our mathematical teaching.
We have engaged in music and singing projects organised within our locality where our colleagues gained further knowledge and understanding about using song and rhyme as a powerful tool to support children’s wider development. We now employ a specialist musician to visit weekly across our Foundation Stage to develop singing and rhyme with our children.
We have ten songs that each child in our Foundation Stage One will learn to sing independently. A further six songs are learned during the children's time in Foundation Stage Two. You can find the songs we are learning this year and the lyrics below.
Click here for the PACEY website which gives more information on song and rhyme in the early years
Click here for more information about rhyme and song on the book trust website
