Printable Nursery Rhyme Worksheets
Pick a nursery rhyme to print out.
- The Ants Go Marching
- An Apple A Day
- Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
- Bat, Bat, Come Under My Hat
- Birds of a Feather
- A Cat Came Fiddling . . .
- Curly Locks, Curly Locks
- Dickery Dickery Dare
- The Farmer in the Dell
- Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum!
- Fiddle Dee Dee!
- Five Little Pigs
- Georgie Porgie
- Good Night, Sleep Tight
- Goosey, Goosey Gander
- Hey Diddle Diddle
- Hickory Dickory Dock
- Higglety, Pigglety
- Hokey Pokey
- Humpty Dumpty
- Hush Little Baby
- If All the World Were Paper
- I Saw a Ship a Sailing
- Ice Cream
- It's Raining, It's Pouring
- I've Been Working... Railroad
- Jack and Jill
- Jack Be Nimble
- Jack Sprat
- John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
- Knick, Knack, Paddy Whack
- Ladybug! Ladybug!
- Little Bo Peep
- Little Boy Blue
- Little Bunny Foo Foo
- Little Jack Horner
- Little Miss Muffet
- London Bridge is Falling Down
- Mary Had a Little Lamb
- Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
- The Man in the Moon
- Oh Dear!
- Old King Cole
- This Old Man
- Old Mother Goose
- Old Mother Hubbard
- One Two, Buckle My Shoe
- Over the River
- Pat-A-Cake Pat-A-Cake
- Peter, Peter, Pumkin Eater
- This Little Piggy
- POP! Goes the Weasel
- Row, Row, Row Your Boat
- Rub-A-Dub-Dub
- She'll Be Comin' Round Mountain
- There Was..Woman.. In A Shoe
- Simple Simon
- Sing a Song of Sixpence
- Skip to My Lou
- Sleep, Baby, Sleep
- Star Light, Star Bright
- Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear
- Three Blind Mice
- There Was A Little Turtle
- Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
- Wee Willie Winkie
- What Are Little Boys...
- What Are Little Girls...
- Yankee Doodle
- Alphabet Lesson Plans
- Alphabet Recognition
- Nursery Rhyme Lesson Plans
How to Use Nursery Rhymes In your Class
Ever since a baby is born, the sound they respond to and resonate with is one with rhythm. Even before they are born, they are accustomed to hearing the heartbeat of their mothers. The sound helps soothe and calm them. They respond to music, songs, and rhymes as they grow older.
These types of verses are used as a form of communication with small babies as they learn to listen to the rhythm and engage with parents. Babies interpret facial expressions and respond with joy when they hear rhymes or songs. It makes them feel involved, and the familiar tunes stick with the child for many more years of learning. They are the foundation of early learning, and there are many benefits of using these types of verses in a classroom. Stay on the page to learn more about them.
The Benefits
Language development
Nursery rhymes are usually the first experience of children with words. When they listen to it at first, they get familiarized with the tune. After a few repetitions, they try to mouth the words in the rhyme, which helps them learn not only the words, but also sentence formations.
Older children will be able to improve their vocabulary through these tunes as it exposes them to unconventional sayings; for example, "buckle my shoe" is something you won't hear or say very often.
Moreover, rhymes are an excellent way of teaching vowel sounds, how the sound of a question differs from an average sentence and English language tenses.
Good Reading Skills
They also improve the reading abilities of children. According to research, a child takes in the most information during the first 8 years of their lives, and this is the best time to teach them how to read and write. The incorporation of nursery rhymes in teaching material will help children not only learn but also retain information.
With the increased use of digital devices, children's reading capabilities have reduced drastically. Rhymes help children's imagination and teach them about story formation. The turn of events in a rhyme from the beginning, middle, and end.
Emotional Development
NThey help to create an emotional bond between parents and teachers. Different characters in nursery rhymes have various emotions like sad, angry, or happy, and such rhymes can help children distinguish between their own.
Nursery rhymes in classrooms also help create a bond among the students as they sing together and act out the rhymes.
Nursery rhymes can also provide emotional support to children, especially when they are upset, sad, overwhelmed, or lonely.
Math Skills
Not only do nursery rhymes help improve English vocabulary, but they are also a great source of introducing math to early learners.
This type of beat frequently incorporate numbers and counting that can help teach children both backward and forward counting. Teaching kids about math concepts like sizes and quantity also becomes easier with the help of nursery rhymes.
Improve Intellectual Skills
This form of language improve hands and legs coordination and also improves intellectual skills like concentration, attention span, imagination, thinking skills, spatial thinking, and memory retention.
How To Incorporate Nursery Rhymes in a Classroom
Using these tunes as a form of teaching has been around since the early 1800s. There are multiple benefits of nursery rhymes for children of all ages, but especially in the classroom, nursery rhymes can be very handy. Let's look at how we can integrate nursery rhymes into our lessons.
- They are a great way of teaching kids rhyming words. Rhyming words are an important part of the English curriculum, and using nursery rhymes can help greatly. You can start off by singing the nursery rhyme and stressing the rhyming word that ends in each sentence. For example, for teaching words that rhyme with "all," Humpty dumpty is an easy start. Teachers can then distribute printouts and ask the students to fill in the rhymes.
- They are a great way of teaching kids about animals and animal sounds. There are countless poems that can be used for this, for example, "Old Macdonald had a farm" or "Baa Baa Black Sheep."
- Teaching kids about different occupations using nursery rhymes will make it fun, and children might really be passionate about becoming something in the future. "Miss Polly had a Dolly" is another excellent nursery rhyme that teaches children about doctors and also familiarizes them with illness.
- Teachers can give students a small history lesson with poems like "Ring Around the Rosie," why and how the rhyme was made. Although it won't be suitable for very young children, students above 8 might be enlightened to learn about the dark history behind such a fun poem we have all grown up listening to and playing too.
- Enacting nursery rhymes is excellent for drama and theater. It will help students learn about expression, action, dialogue, and much more.
- We already brushed up on how nursery rhymes can lay the foundation of Math skills by teaching counting and many other math concepts.
- For older students, teachers may give them a set of rhyming words and to create a rhyme themselves.
- Nursery rhymes like "rain, rain, go away" can be used to teach children about the weather and what happens in different seasons.
There is no limit to the benefits nursery rhymes can offer. They can help teach a plethora of concepts to students, from social, intellectual, and behavioral, to reading, vocabulary, and math skills.
As a teacher, you have no limits to where your creativity takes you. Be creative and utilize nursery rhymes as a fun and easy way to teach kids about all the different things in the world. Rhymes will not only help them retain all the information, but it will make them want to learn even more. Moreover, children will love coming to school for a daily fun rhyming session, and you never know; you might even be their favorite fun teacher they'll remember for many years.