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The Nursery Rhyme Box

A basket full of toys - story basket

What you need

  • A box
  • Nursery rhyme props
  • Colouring kit
  • Decorations (optional)

Benefits

The Nursery Rhymes Box is an activity developed to encourage and promote oral language development in young children. It is essentially a box filled with a number of props that will trigger a nursery rhyme song, such as a stuffed toy cow may trigger the nursery rhyme ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ or ‘Old Mac Donald had a Farm’ because these nursery rhymes have a cow in their lyrics.

The experience

For this learning experience, you will need a large box and number of props or characters that are found in nursery rhymes. You can even create your own props e.g make a spider out of toilet roll or use a star from your Christmas decorations. You can also paint and decorate your nursery rhyme box too!

The idea behind the nursery rhyme box is to pick one item out of the box at a time and think of a nursery rhyme (or song) that has that character or object in it.  Then you sing the nursery rhyme together with your child with all the actions included. 

 

A few suggestions on ideas for props that will remind of the rhymes: 

 

  • Star –Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
  • Spider – Incy Wincy Spider
  • Teapot – I’m a little teapot
  • Teddy Bear – Teddy bear turn around or Rock a Bye Your Bear
  • Doll – Miss Polly had a Dolly
  • Stuffed Toy Cow – Old Mac Donald had a farm
  • Stuffed Toy Dog – How Much is that Doggie
  • Puppet Mouse – Hickory Dickory
  • Puppet Frog – 5 Little Speckled Frogs, 
  • Monkey – Monkey Up a Tree, 
  • Toy Car – Let’s go Driving