Let's Talk Nursery Rhymes

I've started creating YouTube videos of my favorite nursery rhymes. I'm doing this because nursery rhymes are invaluable in the learning to read process. I just did a little research and found this nugget within minutes:

Songs and rhymes for young children have been passed down for generations. They are fun, children love them, and they provide a warm, nurturing experience between parent and child. What we may not be aware of as we recite simple nursery rhymes or sing songs with children is their enormous educational value. “Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.” [Fox, M. (2001). Reading Magic. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.]

I've highlighted the most important part of this quote. This fits well with what I'm doing because my videos are not geared toward the child. They are geared toward the parent, who then can take the nursery rhyme I focus on and teach it to their child. Looks like if they do it eight times, their child will have a head start on reading for sure.

Another motivator for sharing nursery rhymes is the fun I had with my own children using them. It was always special to sit down and read a bunch of nursery rhymes. I read them so often I ended up memorizing many. And when we had our surprise child 11 years after the previous one I was surprised to learn that I could still remember most of them.

And then finally, I share them because of my experience as a teacher and the utter lack of knowledge by my students when it came to nursery rhymes. Over five years of teaching first grade, I only had one student who had obviously learned nursery rhymes. Videos are my effort to help parents teach their children nursery rhymes.

After all this talk, I should share with you the first video.

Let's Talk Nursery Rhymes: Humpty Dumpty