Submitted by Andrea Cope, Texas
Idea posted November 8, 2005
I've discovered that my fourth and fifth graders have a serious lack of nursery rhyme exposure, so I decided to make that my focus with my first graders this year. So far we've done "Jack and Jill," "Hickory Dickory Dock," and "Humpty Dumpty."
We sit in our circle and practice our three nursery rhymes by patting on our laps, just thinking the words. They're so thrilled when they realize they're all stopping and starting together. They just love the break at the end of each phrase.
Then I choose two boys and two girls to sit in the center of the circle with klaves. They play one of the rhymes together then pick classmates to take their places. After doing this three or four times, I have the four of them play one rhyme while I play another. Next the two girls play one rhyme while the two boys play another.
The group I had today, otherwise not normally stellar, was sailing with this. I decided to see how far they could go. The group in the middle played one rhyme, I played another, and the kids in the outer circle patsched a third. No matter how I mixed it up, they consistently got to the phrase breaks and the end together. They were so proud of themselves. I was wishing I was in a chair so I could fall out of it, but I was already on the floor. So I just rolled onto my back and lay there for a few seconds, unable to speak.