Over 2.5 million children have taken part in World Nursery Rhyme Week since its launch in 2013. Open to parents, Early Years practitioners and anybody who works with children under the age of 7, participation and resources are provided free, the event will run from the 19th – 23rd November.
As an Early Years practitioner, I know how much of a major role Nursery rhymes play within childhood development and education, helping with Language and communication, supporting emergent literacy skills, as well as supporting early maths and developing social, physical and emotional skills.
LGfL has a range of award-winning online content that can help support this event and the use of Nursery Rhymes and storytelling though-out the year.
Audio Network has a range of Nursery rhymes to support the day , Audio Network has wide selection of music professionally recorded music, just use the online search function to find themed music and then download to your computer, pre-cleared and ready for use in your classroom, this resource has a range of classic Nursery rhymes to use as well as some fantastic new spins on some old classics, here are my Audio Network top 5 hits!
Rock on Humpty: Offers a rock version of this classic tune.
Incy Wincy Spider: A traditional music box style version of this rhyme.
Little Rock Star: An exuberant upbeat version with female vocal.
Fish Alive: A beautiful rendition of the classic nursery rhyme with 3 part female harmony & percussion.
MacDonald Rock: Old MacDonald gets rocky with this banging tune!
Just search ‘Nursery Rhymes’ within the search bar to find your favourite tunes!
J2e’s Junior Infant Toolkit has a range of tools to support children recreating and retelling Nursery rhymes. The online toolkit allows the following features and are all linked via the LGfL USO log in
Get the students to recreate their favourite scene from the nursery rhyme either using Paint or Animate to create a simple picture or animation.
All Junior Infant Tools have the ability to add sound via the microphone feature (which can be found next the file title bar) you can use this feature to capture the children's voice retelling the rhyme (hit play on the video below, to hear the dulcet tones of my daughter singing Incy Wincy Spider.)
With the recent j2e toolsuite updates you can now paint or fill using textures as well as solid colours, the colour picker and pen sizing have all been improved and an eraser has also been added.
Speech bubbles and text can now be added to painting or animations, vastly improving the learning possibilities, enabling story boards to be created across a range of curriculum subjects. A new stamp feature takes the creativity on to new levels, you now have the ability to not only create your own stamps but these are then all saved in a new My Stamps area and these can then be used across the jit program (for example the Incy Wincy spider seen below was made in paint, was made into a stamp and used within animate)
You could even use the Paint app to create a background which you then add to the Turtle coding platform to create your own Nursery rhyme animation.
Ask children to vote on which Nursery rhyme is their favourite and use the Pictogram tool to show the results.
You can then with the Mix app create a Nursery rhyme book combining all of the files above into one online e-book.
For a less familiar range of songs and rhymes, we have Sing me a Song, a range of Songs and rhymes from around the world sung by Haringey Parents, carers and teachers recorded in 2007/2008 by Haringey Council, this resource captures songs and nursery rhymes from a range of cultures and is fantastic to support knowledge and understanding of the world.
You can ‘register your interest’ for the National Nursery Rhymes week initiative here. Your free resources are available now, the following resources will be made available to participants: Welcome letter, MP3 song files, Colouring Story Rhyme Sheet, Cutting Exercise, Borders Collection, Craft/Art Activity, Pencil Control, Playdough Mats, Rhyme Card Colouring Sheets, Rock Stickers, Sequencing Activity and much, much more.
World Nursery Rhyme Week also has the ‘Rhyme A Day’ challenge, which challenges you to join in and sing one Nursery Rhyme a day with your children. The 5 rhymes and dates for 2018 are:
Monday 19th November – “Five Currant Buns”
Tuesday 20th November – “Humpty Dumpty”
Wednesday 21st November – “A Sailor Went to Sea”
Thursday 22nd November – “I’m a Little Teapot”
Friday 23rd November – “Round and Round the Garden”
Why not video your students singing the songs each day and make your own Rhyme a day challenge video, you can store the video safely within Video Central HD, because VCHD automatically generates HTML code, you can embed the video into your schools website and share your celebration of Nursery Rhymes with your school community.
We love to see what you are doing for World Nursery Rhyme Week on either our Twitter or Facebook pages and please do use the hashtags #rhymeweek and #WeAreLGfL
