Celebrating the festive season remotely with family
As the year ends, people of all faiths are preparing for a variety of festivals […]
Read moreWhat should we sing?
What you need
- Deep container such as a basket
- Fabric such as a scarf to hide the objects that will sit inside
- Objects that represent different nursery rhymes (e.g. rubber duck for ‘Five little ducks’, a star-shaped cookie cutter for ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’, toy sheep for ‘Baa baa black sheep’ and so on).
- Your singing voices!
Benefits
This activity will help your child to become familiar with different nursery rhymes which have huge language benefits as they learn to link the objects to the words in the nursery rhymes. It will help to develop skills such as recognising or naming objects.
The experience
Put the objects in the container, using a piece of fabric such as a large scarf to keep them hidden inside.
Start off by putting your hands in the container and moving them around while saying “What should we sing?”, to encourage your child to explore what is inside. If they pick up an object, say what it is and sing the nursery rhyme linked to it! Creating your own nursery rhyme box/basket like this can be explored over and over again as a fun, daily singing experience together.
As your child becomes used to this experience, you will find they will recognise the objects and associated rhymes. Even young babies enjoy being sung to, and will begin to babble and move their bodies with you! Older children will love taking more of the lead during these sessions and enjoying sharing their knowledge of nursery rhymes with the whole family!