Nursery Rhyme Run Through

This week I had the opportunity to teach Rhys' preschool class four specific nursery rhymes.  I had never really cared for nursery rhymes as a child.  Perhaps it was because they often covered archaic daily life, or that some ideas expressed were done only so they lines would rhyme, or that they were no longer politically correct. 

I did discover that teaching the background behind the words really helped make it more interesting and meaningful and that liberty had been taken to change some of those not so kind words.  For instance, in There was an Old Woman (who lived in a shoe-still ridiculous), she now had so many children, (that the now very capable woman) she knew just what to do.  And instead of starving her children and giving them no bread, she now bakes them bread.  Instead of whipping them soundly, she hugs and kisses them before sending them to bed.  Much better, I'd say.

We started Tuesday by introducing Little Jack Horner.
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner,
Eating a piece of pie.
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plum,
And said, “What a good boy am I!”

We sang the song a few times with matching hand motions then discussed vocabulary such as corner and plum.  We talked about types of pie and eating with fork for better manners.

For the craft we used our thumbs to dab 6 purple plums in our pies and once dry covered them with crusts. 

For show and tell we checked out the items that children brought that started with J or that were our targeted color, purple.

To introduce the letter of the week, J, we used our hands/arms to write large capital and lower case J in the air.  They then chose between a written capital and lower case J and depending on which one they choose, they ran and tagged a corner or hopped to the door and back.

We then  introduced There was an Old Woman.
There was on old woman
Who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children,
She knew just what to do.
She gave them some broth
And baked them some bread,
Then gave them hugs and kisses
And sent them off to bed.

Once again, we sang the song a few times with matching hand motions.  Then we discussed different places to live, what was good/bad about living with so many kids, defined broth, and shared who put each child to bed.

We stopped for a snack to sample warmed broth and ate sesame crackers.  Everyone tried the broth but only one little girl liked it.

After snack we talked about why we wear shoes and discussed that there were different shoes for particular activities.  We then glued the appropriate shoe to the matching activity.

At the start of free play we used a large "shoe" made of boxes with windows and doors cut out (thanks to Neal) and used barbies and baby dolls to live in the house.  We also made them broth in the play kitchen.

Thursday I was able to familiarize the kids with Hot Cross Buns and Little Boy Blue.
Hot cross buns,
Hot cross buns,
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns.
If your daughters don't like 'em,
Give 'em to your sons.
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns.

Why the sons should only qualify for secondhand food is not clear to me.  But we continued and discussed vocabulary of daughter, son, hot cross buns, and penny, and gave them a little background that merchants would call out to sell their buns.

For show and tell the kids shared an item or picture that represented "hot" to them.  We used an oven mitt to pass them to our friends.  We then moved to our kitchen and discussed kitchen safety--hot items, sharps, breakable dishes, using step stools, etc..

We then played a game of selling hot cross buns.  The kids got to pick a "bun" out of the muffin tin and the number under the bun was the amount of pennies they had to count out. 

For snack, I actually baked up hot cross buns the night before and we ate them cream cheese crosses on top.  I don't know if they were good hot cross buns per se because it was the first batch I'd ever made.

 

We then introduced Little Boy Blue.

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,

The sheep's in the meadow,
the cow's in the corn.
Where is the boy that looks after the sheep?
He's under the haystack, fast asleep!

We sang the song a few times and then defined the vocabulary of meadow and haystack checking out images of each on the Internet.  We had some good discussion about what type of work Little Boy Blue is supposed to do, what the cow could be doing in the corn, why Little Boy Blue needed a horn, etc.

The kids checked under several haystacks (piles of rags) to uncover pictures of J words and added them to our J word wall with glue.

We then decorated our horns (toilet paper tubes) with stickers and experimented with the horns.  They tried tooting high and low, loud and soft, and then played an echo game where they tried to mimic what I tooted.

We then set up some dramatic play.  We set out toys to make a farm and took turns being the farmer and blowing our horns at predators.  This got a load of giggles and squeals!

I actually had a lot of fun teaching them the nursery rhymes and still think most of them are lame.