When it comes to nursery rhyme activities we all know just how much fun they can be, not to mention that they can bring back many memories from our early childhood years. But another thing that we tend to think about when it comes to nursery rhyme activities is that most of the time the nursery rhyme activities are for young children because of the fact that we teach the nursery rhymes to young children. But even though a lot of nursery rhyme activities are actually based for young children that doesn’t mean that children of all ages can’t enjoy nursery rhyme activities, in fact there are many nursery rhyme activities that can be found for older children.
Here is a look at some of the nursery rhyme activities that different ages can enjoy.
Nursery Rhyme Charades:
•Divide the players up into two different teams.
•Next prepare a basket that has numerous strips of paper containing portions of nursery rhymes on them. You need to place the strips of paper with the nursery rhymes on them into the basket.
•The first team needs to pick somebody to draw a nursery rhyme from the basket.
•Once you have drawn the nursery rhyme you need to act it out by using your hands, body language, or facial expressions. You can not talk at all during this game.
•A person from your team must guess the correct nursery rhyme. You can also set time limits to make the game even more challenging.
•Each team takes turns drawing and acting out the nursery rhymes until all of the slips are done.
Nursery rhymes sequences:
Another thing that is really popular with nursery rhymes is sequencing. Basically you can do this activity with any nursery rhyme, regardless of if it is a lullaby, counting nursery rhyme or something else.
•The first thing that you need to do is to create pictures that illustrate the nursery rhymes. Depending on what age the kids are you will want to do different numbers of pictures. For young children keep it simple but for older children you can more pictures. Basically the older the children the more pictures they need to put in the correct order.
•Next you are going to want to say the nursery rhyme with the children. If it is a new rhyme you are introducing you will want to review it a few times before letting the children do the activity.
•After reviewing the nursery rhyme have the children place the pictures in the correct order, which would be in the order that describes the nursery rhyme.
Jack Jump over the Candlestick:
Materials Needed:
•Construction paper
•Empty toilet paper roll or paper towel holder
Directions:
•First thing that you need to do is to make a candlestick out of the toilet paper or paper towel roll by gluing on a paper flame that you have cut out from the construction paper.
•Next you need the children to line up in a single file line
•Then you need to have each child recite the nursery rhyme and then jump over the candlestick on the last part.
•You can see who jumps the longest or the highest or who has the most graceful landing or you can use this game as a way to get the children to wash their hands.
Three Little Kitten Mitten Collage:
Materials needed:
•Wall paper scraps or books
•Glue
•Large paper
Directions:
•Take the wall paper scraps or books and cut out various mittens
•Allow the children to glue the mittens to the large scrap of paper to make a collage.