10 Nursery Rhymes for Tots

Singing songs and Nursery Rhymes have so many benefits for your child – not only do they help language development but they are also great for introducing counting, animal sounds and are a great way to connect with your child. Here we share 10 of our favourite Nursery Rhymes.

Even the youngest of babies can enjoy nursey rhymes and you will quickly find that they start to connect with you as you sing with them. As babies with J and T we used to either sing the nursery rhymes to them whilst on our laps or get down on the floor with them and sing them. Songs that involve some form of actions are J and T’s favourites now. So here are our 10 favourite Nursery Rhymes for Tots.

• Humpty Dumpty – We like the traditional version of this nursery rhyme although there are modern versions where Humpty gets put back together again. Both J and T love the falling off our laps when it comes to the part.
• Row Row Row your Boat – we have a full 6 verse version of this popular nursery rhyme going in our house, yes I didn’t realise either that there were so many verses to it, but it has to be one of our favourites – until recently it was always sung by me to J or T, but in the last week the two of them have started to do rowing to each other and J will sing it to T with his on mix up of all the verses
• Wheels on the Bus – another great action nursery rhyme, we tend to mix up the verses and have our own take on a few but this is T’s favourite – one of the first communications we had would be her sitting on my lap and grabbing my hands and moving them.
• Grand Old Duke of York – J has just started to march to this one, when both were tiny I would sit them on my lap facing me and sing this with them lifting them into the air when the Duke marched them up and bring them back down. Now J is older we’re starting to get him to march and stand up and kneel down at the right times.
• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – I had sung this with J and T to try and get them to sleep every night since they were babies whilst nursing them, with J I can now stroke his hair at bedtime and sing this and he will drift off. We also sing this during the day with actions and this week T has started to put her hands together to form a diamond, she has always loved the up move in it.
• Old MacDonald Had a Farm – or a zoo when you let a 2 and a half year old choose the animals in the song especially now that T knows and will reply to the phrase “What noise does a Lion make” with “RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR”, we frequently have crocodiles, monkeys, gorillas and even dinosaurs at Old MacDonald’s farm but it’s such a great rhyme and J and T love it for practising their animal noises.
• Incy Wincy Spider (Itty Bitty Spider) – as young babies I would lie J or T on my lap or on the floor in front of me and sing this song to them as I had my hand crawl up their legs and stomach and then pitter patter with my fingers for the rain. They would giggle away as the spider ran up their legs again at the end. Now we move our hands together to make the spider climbing up the spout.
• One, Two, Three, Four, Five – this has some great hand actions in it and really helps with counting. It sends T into hysterics when instead of biting her little finger the fish may bite her nose, toe or ear.
• Zoom Zoom Zoom - This was J’s favourite as a baby, early toddler and one of the reasons why I think he counted backwards from 5 before he could count forwards as we used to sing this all the time, he loved being sent into space so much it was always met with either hand grabs for more or me being told MORE MORE MORE
• Hey Diddle Diddle – Rainy Day Dad sings this with J and T and will change the words to include our dog, the kids names and all sorts of strange and wonderful variations of it – J encourages him with more more more.

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What are your favourite Nursery Rhyme to sing with your Tots?

 

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