Songs and Nursery Rhymes - the mood booster
- Aug 14, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 9, 2020
Old Mcdonald had a farm, ee I ee o, and on his farm, he had some cows.
Sounds familiar? If you had listened to this song for just a few times, most likely, you can still b able to recite 70% of it. Why? This is the power of nursery rhymes. It is indeed one of the best ways to introduce language to early childhood life.
Here are 5 reasons why nursery rhymes are such useful tools.
1. Learn words and sentences
Repetitive and limited in words, this makes learning words and sentence structure easier and more effective. Same as a drill practice but without feeling bored. For our younger toddlers, this would then be a great introduction to the concept of words and sentences, simply immersing them in a language environment can already bring a great impact on later learning.
2. Generate speech production
To most kids, singing the song out aloud is already powerful enough to get their mouth moving. But to make it more challenging, act dumb. Sing the word wrong or do an opposite action. Ask your child for help in singing or doing the actions along with the music. This is also great to build up their sense of confidence provided that they teach you correctly and praises were given to them.
3. Great for memorization
In particular, when doing fingerplays or dancing around, the effect is drastic. It requires multiple senses: hearing, speaking, watching. In fact, it is shown by Christiner, M.; Reiterer, S.M., 2018, that, in preschoolers, the better their music perception, the better their ability in remembering new learning materials.
Utilizing multiple body senses when learning aids memorization greatly.
-----------------Micah Murray, 2017
So try mixing things up, play some music in the background or put up music videos on YouTube, sing and dance along with it!
4. Develop phonological awareness skills
As the name suggests, nursery rhymes are meant to rhyme. rhyming words are two or more words with the same or similar ending sound and contribute to phonological awareness.
To add to this, singing introduces the concept of sounds. It is inevitable: you have to sing the correct sound to be able to sing correctly.
According to Bolduc, Jonathan & Lefebvre, Pascal. (2012), it is shown that nursery rhymes are effective in developing the awareness of sound in words among kindergarteners.
5. Develop tonality and rhythm
Speaking is very similar to singing. It involves rhythm and intonation. Picture this, you see a man on the street speaking 'I am a boy and I like to sing.' but said it as
'I am a boy and I like to sing' (bold texts here indicating high tone and speed.)
Have a go at saying it.
That sounds extremely weird. Doesn't it?
This is what I am saying: speaking with appropriate tone and rhythm.
In a song, it is similar but more fluent and faster. It helps practice speaking in the right tone and rhythm.
BONUS
It brings joy!
Last but not least, who does not enjoy songs? It lights up the room once everyone is singing. All the kids I have worked with adore singing these simple yet cheerful songs, be it boys or girls.
Resources
Here are the most popular nursery rhymes in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language freely available for you to download, kindly provided by the State Library of Queensland. Happy singing!
What do you think about songs? Tell me your thoughts below! Hope you have enjoyed discovering the power of nursery rhymes as I did.
Ideas on the best nursery rhymes are posted weekly on my Pinterest: Joyspeech!
Have a great day and don't forget to smile!
Joyce Lau
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