One of the best ways to educate children is to expose them to a wide variety of literature. I can hardly count the stories and songs that I’ve known since childhood! As an adult, I’ve continued to add to my knowledge of folk songs and nursery rhymes, but those learned as a child hold a special pla ce in my memory!
Children love stories! Aesops fables, good old fairy tales, mother Gooses nursery rhymes, Hans Christian Anderson- all are rich resources. Brereton Rabbit, Bro Anansi, Uncle John’s Bedtime Stories- the list goes on.
If you have oversight of Little Children, the young ones learning to read and sing, select stories with a lot of repetition – often in a chant or song that they can join in. Here are some classic examples.
3 Little Pigs: Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!
The Gingerbread Man: Run, run as fast as you can; you can’t catch me.I’m the ginger bread man!
Goldilocks. The first was too big, the second too small, but the third one was just right!
Jack and the Beanstalk: Fi fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman Be he dead or be he alive I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.
Chicken Little. (Search book, not the movie) Recent version: https://www.thefablecottage.com/fables/chicken-little
The Little Red Hen. It has such a satisfying conclusion: And so she did!
OK, so now I’m getting carried away! The other thing we can do is the story-song. There are a lot of songs that have a story (There was an old woman who swallowed a fly) or songs that deal with counting numbers (1, 2 buckle my shoe). I’ll do that in a separate post.
Leave a Reply