Over 3.1 million children have taken part in World Nursery Rhyme Week since its launch in 2013. Primary Schools, Nurseries, Preschools, Childminders, Kindergarten, Parents, Grandparents, Guardians, Nannies, Home Educators, Speech and Language Practitioners, Librarians, or anyone who works with or has a child under the age of 7 participation all resources are provided free and the event will run from November 18th to 22nd.
As an Early Years practitioner myself, 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 skills 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 is linked via the LGfL USO log in
- Word processing
- Animation
- Painting
- Early data handing skills with Pictogram
- Early Coding skills
Why not get your students to recreate their favourite scene from the nursery rhyme either using Paint or Animate to create a simple picture or animation and don't forget all Junior Infant Tools have the ability to add audio 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 tool suite 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 storyboards to be created across a range of curriculum subjects.
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. Were you will access to a range of free resources such as a Welcome letter, MP3 song files, Colouring Story Rhyme Sheets, Cutting Exercises, Craft/Art Activites, Playdough Mats, Rhyme Card Colouring Sheets, certificates, 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 2019 are:
- Monday 18th – Baa Baa Black Sheep
- Tuesday 19th – Down In The Jungle
- Wednesday 20th – Incy Wincy/Itsy Bitsy Spider
- Thursday 21st – Row Row Row Your Boat
- Friday 22nd – Two Little Dickie Birds
Why not video your students singing the songs /rhymes each day and make your own Rhyme a day challenge collection of videos? You can store and host the video safely within the j2e Toolsuite within the ‘my files’ section and you can also share the video with others in your community via a safe weblink or for quick access by creating a QR code see the video below for more details on this.
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
And with all of this talk of downloading, uploading and streaming video and audio files don’t forget about our latest campaign Pledge 2020, Where we are giving schools a bandwidth boost, putting more security into our network and putting in fantastic equipment AT NO ADDITIONAL COST -to help enhance the use of video and audio streaming as well as hosting files all #PoweredbyPledge2020