Nursery rhymes are a fun way to encourage learning in your children. Parents or grandparents, we all know some good nursery rhymes to share with our children.
Nursery rhymes… remember them?
Surely when you were a child they were very “in vogue”. But their popularity seems to have decreased in time, even though they are an excellent way of having fun with your child and developing their brain.
Nursery rhymes offer oral support to children and aid in their development of hearing awareness. They are part of children’s pre-literacy skills, being an important pillar in their cognitive development. Their value to children’s language and learning foundation cannot be underestimated.
Benefits of teaching your child nursery rhymes
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Developing phonemic awareness
Nursery rhymes teach children to pronounce words. A lot of nursery rhymes are full of interjections or funny words. They have the role of helping children repeat difficult groups of sounds with the aim of improving their speech. Above all, nursery rhymes teach children intonation and correct pronunciation.
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Building memory and articulation
Nursery rhymes are full of rhyming words, and usually it is words or groups of sounds that you don’t encounter in regular words. By introducing your child to these patterns of sounds, nursery rhymes give their brain the input it will need to categorise words by their internal structure. This acts as a precursor to written language, where children have to identify the sounds of written words.
For example, nursery rhymes help your child’s brain to differentiate between syllables and to identify similarities between words that rhyme or words that begin with the same sounds.
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Understanding of concepts: painting pictures in children’s heads
When you teach your child nursery rhymes, you are contributing to their creative development. When you talk to your child from the moment they are born, through to their years of learning how to talk, you are equipping them with a solid vocabulary base.
What is more, children also learn to understand abstract concepts like big, small, in front, behind, first and last. The words used in nursery rhymes help children develop language comprehension by associating words with people, objects, and events in their daily life.
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Development of social routines
There are lots of fun nursery rhymes that you can sing in two parts. Teaching your child when they should tell their part in the rhyme contributes to their development of social skills. What is more, your child will also learn important conversation lessons, such as turn-taking and listening.
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Listening skills
When you read nursery rhymes to your child, you are telling them a story. Because of the rhyming words, the storyline, and your pronunciation, children are lured into the story and pay attention to you. This helps them make sense of the story and at the same time makes them good listeners.
Remember these nursery rhymes?
Nursery rhymes are fun for children and they can be excellent conversation openers between parents, their parents and grandparents.
Here are some good old nursery rhymes you can learn with your child. Bring the family together, maybe some family members know the lyrics by heart.