Lately I have been trying to find fun opportunities to help develop and encourage Miss 14 month’s speaking, listening and language skills. One of the best ways I know how is to sing and play with nursery rhymes with her. Nursery rhyme activities can be done with all ages, Miss 3 and 5 also played along with us. Nursery rhymes also help prepare children for future learning and teach them beginning pre-reading skills. Teddy Bears Everywhere is a fun nursery rhyme activity we can do with our kids to help promote this learning through play. 
This part is soooo much fun! It involves collecting up as many teddy bears in the house and placing them in the centre of the room. Kids love the challenge of searching and finding the teddy bears for this activity!We then use these teddy bears to act out and sing along to many of our favourite teddy bear nursery rhymes, Teddy Bear Teddy Bear, Rock-a Bye Your Bear and Round and Round the Garden. Changing the teddy bears we use for each nursery rhyme.Using real toy teddy bears brings this activity to life! It promotes imagination, creativity, learning and fun!
Round and round the garden like a teddy bear, (Finger circulating small circles around ted’s tummy)A one step, a two-step, (Walking finger actions)Tickling him under there! (Tickling ted under the chin)Print lyrics here
Everybody clap (clap)Everybody sing (la la la la la)Bow to your partner (bow teddy)Then you turn around (spin teddy around)Hands in the air (place ted’s hands in the air)Rock-a-bye your bear (cradling ted in arms)Bear’s now asleep (sh sh sh)Print lyrics here
Use a teddy bear to follow the actions to this song:Teddy bear teddy bear turn aroundTeddy bear teddy bear touch the groundTeddy bear teddy bear turn off the lightTeddy bear teddy bear say good nightPrint more verses here
Benefits of singing nursery rhymes:- Develop and extend vocabulary.
- Rhyme – understanding rhyme in our spoken language helps children learn to read.
- Rhythm- helps children to remember words and develop auditory memory skills.
- Phonemic awareness – hearing and understanding that words are made up of individual sounds and other word patterns.
- Fine motor skills and coordination – Encourages actions and movement.
Love this idea, I have lots of teddies for the kids to play with I will give this a go next week.
Thanks Alison…..you can never have too many teddies 🙂
xx
wow ! i love it !