video nursery rhymes – download – circleofdeadchildren.net

If you’re reading this article you too, probably, have a toddler or two running around creating havoc. If, like me, you’re wondering where all the traditional nursery rhymes have gone to, I’m here to remedy the situation!

Do you remember the traditional children’s songs from your kindergarten years such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, Incy Wincy/Itsy Witsy Spider, ABC, etc? I assume that you remember them sung in a certain way, with different emphasis and stresses on certain keywords. You cannot forget the melodies either – impossible! In fact a lot of melodies are reused on multiple nursery rhymes such as Twinkle Twinkle has the same melody as the A, B, C Song and Baa Baa Black Sheep.

So you can imagine my horror when recently, when I was trying to entertain my youngest daughter (15 months old) with some videos on YouTube and almost none of these aforementioned kids’ songs were as I recalled! Was my poor memory to blame here?

I wanted to show my baby all the nursery rhymes that I had grown up with, as did my own mother/father and theirs too. I was stunned (or should that read “shocked”?) to see how disastrously bad the vast majority of the online videos were. I mean they were really awful! At best, some were genuinely laugh out loud, but for all the wrong reasons(!) and at worst some were downright scary and perhaps not even suitable for young children. Perhaps the ratio of good:poor quality was around 1:40! Also I noticed that most of the YouTube nursery rhyme videos had incredibly long intros – 20, 30 or even more seconds of pre-ambling material, promotions and other irrelevant material before actually commencing the main theme. I probably don’t need to tell you dear parent, that even just 20 seconds can seems like an incredibly long time when you have a wriggling and slightly bored baby on your lap!

Not only are the websites and animations mainly of an incredibly poor quality the actual songs and lyrics themselves were very often incorrect, as the singer/company’s first language was often not actually English. Where had all the real nursery rhymes gone I wondered? There was very little online resources that mirrored my childhood memories. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” had now become “Dwingle Dwingle” and the little boy from Baa Baa Black Sheep now lived in the lane (whatever that means!)

It’s important that we don’t lose our traditional songs to the unrelenting technological changes that allow anyone to upload any material they like to the internet. It’s important that high standards are adhered to and that we pass our playground songs on accurately. I urge you to check out some of the nursery rhyme videos for yourself to see how awful they have become. You will laugh at some and cringe at others but after the initial laughter has died down you too will feel the sadness of your childhood memories becoming lost.

Nursery rhymes, sung or read, with or without actions, are a rich way to extend your baby’s and

preschooler’s cognitive development.

Nursery rhymes have a long history – they are sung or recited or read, some have actions, and they have often been handed down to you from your parents. Aren’t they dated? Don’t you want to give your baby the most up to date and the best?

The fact is that the baby won’t mind. If it comes naturally to you – and it will, if you were sung to as a child as well, in whatever language is your mother tongue – then it is perfect to hand on to your little one as well. They don’t know that some, in English anyway, are about 500 years old. They will get to recognise the words, the tunes, the actions.

They are always to hand. Amuse a child on a long car trip – how many nursery rhymes can you remember? Or while the baby is waiting for their meal – they may always respond to ‘Baa baa black sheep’ when you sing it, or ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’.

Then there is language development. Strong rhymes can lead the baby to predict the next word, and join in, long before that word is part of their spoken vocabulary: ‘Once I saw a little bird/ Coming hop, hop -’ ‘Hop!’ your little one shouts in delight. The word for one nursery rhyme may be a request for them all. ‘Oh dear’ (sung) was how one toddler requested a nursery rhyme session at the piano at sixteen months. And the word ‘spider’ or actually seeing one – real or pictured – would lead to an attempt to make the actions for ‘Ipsey wipsey spider climbed up the waterspout’, even at thirteen months. Another, at twelve months, would respond to ‘Twinkle twinkle’ sung, or a star shape seen, with the diamond shape on the fingers.

Some of the actions are very dramatic. ‘This is the way the ladies ride/Tri, tre, tre, tree, tri tre tre tree’ with its ending that the butcher’s boy goes ‘bumpety bumpety bumpety – off’ – all so exciting on (and off) the knee of an officiating adult.

Some of the words are dated, even archaic, but any language at this age is good language, and if used correctly can be perfectly understood. At three one child was still using some baby language, so she begged to be picked up – ‘Uff uff me, or my heart will break’, a phrase used by her brother at six months younger when stuck on a fence ‘Help me or my heart will break!’ (the nursery rhyme being ‘There was a lady loved a swine’)

But aren’t they full of violence and death? Everyone seems to know the (aporyphal) story about ‘Ring a ring a rosies/ a pocket full of posies’ being about the plague. But it matters not to a child, who much enjoys playing the game and falling down. In fact another child used the word ‘awfawdow’ (‘all fall down’) when looking at any nursery rhyme book, or even when seeing a parent sitting on the floor. But there is death and violence also, in terms the child can understand – ‘Goosy goosy gander’ has ‘an old man’ thrown down the stairs, ‘Solomon Grundy’ ‘died on Saturday, buried on Sunday’, and ‘Who killed Cock Robin?’ (‘a sparrow with an arrow’ one child replied at once on hearing the phrase as the title of a picture book). Once these casual glances at death might have prepared children (just a little) for the deaths of siblings and even parents, which were much more common than they are now. Today, the rhymes are just part of the cycle of life and death, that most of today’s lucky children learn through the life and death of pets and grandparents.

Well, I can hear you say, aren’t some of them arrant nonsense? Yes, of course that’s true. There are the overt ones like ‘Two children sliding on the ice, /All on a summer’s day’ and the more subtle ones telling stories that are just impossible ‘There was an old woman who lived in a shoe’. But nonsense, word play, make-believe and imagination, are all the ways that the young child learns about reality as well. They can laugh at these topsy- turvy rhymes, understanding the humour, and their unreality.

In short, offer nursery rhymes to your baby from birth. They’ll give infinite pleasure to the little one, and remind you of your own childhood too.