English Rhymes-1

Make learning a fun activity

Do not make learning a boring task for your child; rather make it enjoyable and playful activity. Colorful books attract children like nothing else. What fun it would be to learn the poem, 'twinkle twinkle little star' while looking at the picture of a dark sky with twinkling stars. A child would surely like to recite the poem, 'hot cross buns' if he has a picture of mouthwatering steamy buns alongside the written verses.

Just the click of mouse and there you have so many nursery rhyme videos to choose from. Show your child the video of the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill, so he will not find it tedious to by heart and sing the rhyme along with the video. Not only English rhymes but you will find Hindi rhymes and videos too on the internet.

Audio cassettes and CDs of nursery rhymes would be a great learning treasure to possess. Tune on the record player and let your child hum the nursery rhyme along with the tape. It would be fun to sing a nursery rhyme if you have chirpy background music. Hearing the poem, 'jingle bells, jingle bells' on the tape-recorder would make your child rock and roll while tapping his foot on the rhythm of the jingling bells.
How to remember a poem?
Remembering a poem would not be hard if you use certain techniques. You must have seen some children singing movie songs word to word. How do they do that? They do that as no one forces them to learn these songs. No one asks them to sit down and learn word to word several times. It is the same with nursery rhymes. Do not portray the activity of learning nursery rhymes as the part of academics, but put forward it as a fun activity. Following are some tricks to make your child interested in singing rhymes.
Sing the poem to your child and explain him the meaning of the poem. Tell him the meaning with the use of some interesting anecdotes.
Make reciting a poem an everyday activity. You can assign a particular time for singing rhymes such as before going to bed or on Sunday afternoons.
Make your child to write down a nursery rhyme and ask him to draw and paint the picture that comes in his mind after singing a particular rhyme. Your child can create a beautiful scrapbook full of rhymes and colorful pictures.
Make it a point to correct the mistake if your child is making any while reciting a poem.

Singing a nursery rhyme

How would it look if your child is singing a nursery rhyme while standing straight with his hands folded? Boring, isn't it? Singing a nursery rhyme is something that should be cheerful. A child should join his hands, place them near his ear, and tilt his head a little while reciting the poem, ‘are you sleeping’? A toddler Singing , should make crawling gestures with the fingers while singing the nursery rhyme, ‘incy wincy spider’ which tells the story of the spider who climbs up the water spout.

Make puppets out of a white cardboard, paint them and paste them on the wooden stick. Enact a nursery rhyme while mimicking its words with the use of these puppets. You even do not need to make puppets to act out certain poems like ‘teddy bear, teddy bear’, where you can use a stuffed teddy to enact the poem.

Make a small group of children and let them enact a nursery rhyme. ‘Ring-a-ring a roses’ is the poem to perform in a group. Let all the children hold their hands and fall down at the end of the poem. You can also enact a poem with your child. Let your child be a Johnny and you are his papa and have fun while enacting the poem, ‘Johnny Johnny, yes papa’.

Importance of nursery rhymes

Nursery rhymes are being sung, recited, mimicked, enacted, and learnt for ages. Learning nursery rhymes is an important pre-school activity. A child will never forget how many days are there in each month after learning the poem, ‘thirty days of September’. Learning seven days of the week would not be difficult after learning the poem, ‘Solomon Grundy born on a Monday’. Counting from one to ten would be t