Teacher’s Guide

Nursery Rhymes and Songs

• For all twenty-three of these rhymes and songs, teach them how to clap to the rhythm and move their bodies to the music.
• Use the illustrations too, to teach them shapes and colour. Some have charts that show you other words that come in that category.  Please use them to improve the vocabulary of the students.

 

1. The Alphabet Song

• Sing out and enjoy the music.
• After a while point to the letters that they sing – once in capital and once in simple.
• Later, point to any letter and get the child/children to shout out its name.

 

2. I’m a Little Teapot

• Movements:
  • • Show short and stout with your hands.
    • For handle put one arm on the hip. For spout, show a spout with the other arm.
    • Bend down to the side of the spout like a teapot for “Pour me out’.
• Vocabulary
  • • Words associated with tea – tea cup, saucer, teapot, strainer, tea leaves, jug, kettle, water, milk, sugar
• General Knowledge
  • • Teach them the process of making tea.
• Drama:
  • • They can play act making tea – with pretend things.
    • They can serve tea to visitors.

 

3. Pat-a- Cake, Pat-a-Cake

 Movements

• • • For the first two lines, stand in front of another child and clap you palms together once and then the palm of the child in front, moving the arm diagonally.
    • Then act out patting, then pricking the cake, and then drawing a B over it
    • And then mime putting the cake in the oven.
• Vocabulary
  • • Food items that can be made with flour – bread, cake, chapati, dosa, buns
    • Objects in the kitchen – hearth, gas cooker, coconut scraper, refrigerator (fridge), oven.
    • Professions – baker, postman, policeman, doctor, teacher, pilot, nurse etc.

 

4. Are You Sleeping?

 

• Movements
  • • Show the movements of ringing a bell in the last line.

• Vocabulary – verbs – sleep, sit, stand etc.
• Drama
  • • Act as if you are getting up in the morning.
    • Act as if you are going to sleep in the night
    • Act as if you are trying to wake someone up.

 

 Row Row Row Your Boat

• Movements
  • • Sit facing another child and hold each other’s hands and rock forwards and backwards to the rhythm.
• Vocabulary
  • • What are the modes of transport on water?  Boat, sail boat, motor boat, ship, raft
    • What travels on earth?  Train, car, bicycle, lorry, bus, truck, motorbike
    • What travels in the air?  Airplane

6. Baa Baa Black Sheep

• Sing this out.
• Clap to the rhythm
• Movements:
  • • Show three on your fingers
    • Nod at ‘Yes, sir, yes sir’.
• Learn how to count – 1 – 10 in English.
• Learn some colours – black and white
• General Knowledge: Identify some colors in animals.
  • • What colours do cows have?
    • Sheep?
    • Ants/crows/stalks/parrots?

 

7. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

• Movements: Do these actions with each line:
  • • Show with your fingers what it is to twinkle
    • Place a finger under your chin to show you are thinking.
    • Point to the sky when you say up above
    • Show a diamond shape with your fingers at the last line
• Activity to learn directions
  • • Point above
    • Point below
    • Point to the left/right/at the sky/at trees (and whatever you can see there)

 

8. Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

• Movement: The children can touch the parts of the body used in this rhyme as they sing the song.

 

9. Hey Diddle Diddle

• Teach vocabulary related to
  • • Animals – cats, cow, dog
    • Crockery – spoon, dish, fork, plate
    • Instruments – fiddle, drum, piano
    • Things in the sky – moon, stars, clouds
• Drama
  • • Pretend to be the dish and the spoon and run away.
    • Pretend to be the cow and jump over the moon
    • Laugh like the dog.

 

10. Hickory Dickory Dock

• Movement: This rhyme also has actions
  • • Roll your arms over one another and clap at “dock”
    • Raise your arms at ‘ran up the clock’ – as if the fingers are walking
    • After ‘The clock struck one’ – clap once (and keep adding claps at two three four etc.)
    • At ‘down’ bring your hands down
    • Repeat first action for the last line of Hickory Dickory Dock
• Vocabulary –
  • • Teach them animal names like the ones that come in the rhyme
    • Teach them numbers from 1 – 5
• General Knowledge: Reading the time –
  • • They will get used to reading the clock at hourly intervals if you can draw the clock face on the board and show what the hours they shout out in the rhyme look like

 

11. Incy Wincy Spider

• Movements:
  • • For the first line walk your fingers upon each other, starting with the thumb on the forefinger of the other hand and vice versa, raising your arms up as you go.
    • For ‘Down came the rain’, bring your arms down fast
    • For ‘Out came the sun’, spread your arms in a wide circle
    • And then repeat the first action again
• Vocabulary – names of insects

 

12. Bingo Was His Name-o

• Rhythmic Awareness:
  • • A letter from the word BINGO is taken away at every verse, and is replaced with a clap. Get the students to do this.  This gives them a good sense of rhythm and timing.
• Get them to shout out the letters that make BINGO as loud as they can.

 

13. Mary had a Little Lamb

• Vocabulary – farm animals

• Drama:
  • • Act this rhyme out. Pretend to be Mary and the lamb.  Some children can be the school kids laughing and talking around lamb.  One child can be the teacher, trying to get the lamb out of school.

 

14. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

• Movements:

Act out the buckling shoes, shutting the door, picking up sticks and laying them straight.

• Vocabulary – Count from 1 to 10
• Play:

Draw a grid with the numbers on the floor, and jump to the numbers as you sing this rhyme.

1	2
3	4
5	6
7	8
9	10

 

15. My Father Has a Garden

• This song may be difficult to sing along to – but they can enjoy listening to it.
• Vocabulary
  • • Names of flowers
    • The animals that live in or use trees – birds, bees, squirrels
• Classification –
  • • Who are the animals that live in trees? In water? Under the earth? On the earth?

 

16. If You are Happy and You Know It

• Movements:
  • • The children have to do the action when they see the words after each line – clap, stomp and shout hurray.
• Activity –
  • • You can add different verbs to the actions in this rhyme – wave your hand/ swing your arms/shake your legs/ turn around etc.
• Vocabulary – verbs of action

 

17. Hush a Bye Baby

• Once you know the words, sing this softly like a lullaby
• Movements – Swing a baby to sleep in your alms as you sing.
• General Knowledge – learning about trees
  • • What are the strong tall trees, on which you can build swings?
    • What are small trees, whose branches are not that strong?

 

18. Wheels on the Bus

• Movements

Each of these verses have an action that you can do while you sing that verse.

1. 1. 1. 1. Turn your arms over one another
         2. Pretend you are bouncing on a seat going up and down
         3. Pretend to press a horn and say ‘beep, beep, beep’
         4. Wave our hands with palms outwards like a wiper
         5. Put your fingers together and then open them to show twinkling lights
         6. Pretend to cry like babies
         7. Put your finger on your lips and say ‘Shhhh’

 

19. Old McDonald Had a Farm

• When the song is sung, encourage the children to make the sounds the animals make as realistically as they can.
• Vocabulary – farm animals
• Drama
  • • Make animal sounds – cows – moo/sheep – baa/ hens – cluck.
    • What sounds do they make according to your culture?

 

20. The Ants Go Marching One by One

• Movements: This can be sung with the following actions:
  • • When it says one by one, the children stand in a line.

At two by two, they stand two together.

At three by three, three children stand together

• • • and so on, all the way up to 10.
• All the while they go marching up and down the class.
• Tell them to shout out the ‘Boom boom boom’.
• Vocabulary – Counting from numbers 1- 10.
• Play (to learn verbs of movement)
  • • Shout ‘march’ or ‘run’ or ‘walk’ or ‘crawl’ and get the children to show those ways of movement.

 

21. Hush Little Baby

• Movements:
  • • Sway your body to the rhythm
    • Pretend to rock a baby to sleep in your arms
• Vocabulary
  • • Learn the nouns that come in the song – mockingbird/diamond ring/looking glass/billy goat/ cart and bull/ dog/ horse and cart

Which of these can you see most often in the environment around you?

 

22. I Can Sing a Rainbow Too

• Vocabulary – Learn the colours of the rainbow
• Show the relevant colours while you sing. Have color strips ready or show the colours in the picture found in the book.
• General knowledge
  • • Teach the children what eyes etc. do.

What do eyes do?  – See

What do ears do? – Hear

What do noses do?  Smell

What do mouths do – Taste

• Igniting imagination;
  • • Ask the children why, in this song, the rainbow is ‘sung’ and not ‘seen’. (The answer can be something like – because the colours of the rainbow are sung out.  Any creative answer will be alright here.)

 

23. Home on the Range

• Vocabulary – learn the names of the animals here – buffalo, antelope etc.
• General knowledge
  • • Geographical locations – beach, coast, mountain, valley, plains

 

Aesop’s Fables

1. The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse

• Vocabulary – verbs of action
  • • Jump, run, hide, chase, shout, walk
• Game – Simon Says

Shout out a verb of action with the words “Simon says” or without that.  The children should do it when they hear the verb with “Simon says’ and not do it when only the verb is said. So the facilitator should mix the way the verb is shouted out to make it exciting.  If they do the action when the phrase ‘Simon says’ is not there, the child is ‘out’. The one/ones who get left at the end is the winner.

• General Knowledge
  • • Where can houses be located be located? Town, country, beach, city, mountains
    • In what types of buildings can people make homes? Huts, mansions, castles, flats, apartments. IF possible show pictures of these different types of homes.
• Drama
  • • • Act out the scene where the mice run from the cat and then is chased by a maid too.
      • Act out the mice eating their fill on the table.
      • Act out how country mouse is shivering in fright when the cat is yowling outside the hole in the night

 

2. The Oak and the Reed

• Vocabulary – Adjectives – Strong, weak, angry, scornful, sad, proud.
• Drama
  • • Teach children how to show these emotions on their faces.
    • Shout out an adjective “Be angry”, “Be proud” “Be sad” and get them to show it on their faces and in their posture. –

 

3. Goldilocks and the Three Bears

• Classification game –
  • • Pick stones/leaves/flowers of different sizes and tell them to group them according to the rough sizes of ‘small, medium and big’.
    • Say “Show me a small/medium sized/big stone/leaf/flower” – and get them to hold it up. (Of course, these sizes are relative.  So whatever you can find, group accordingly)

 

• Vocabulary –
• Colour – gold, black, brown, blue, red
  • • Identify the colours in the pictures that come in the story.
    • Have little strips of colour (or colour pencils) and tell them the name of the colour in English. Then hold it up and let them shout the name out.
• Furniture – chair, table, bed,
  • • Name the furniture in the pictures
• Crockery – bowl, cup, plate, spoon
• Drama –
  • • Act out the three bears seeing their bowls, seeing their chairs, and seeing their beds.
    • Act out Goldilocks seeing the bears, getting frightened, and running away.
• Learning language functions –
  • • Greetings –

Hello, how are you?

Welcome.

• • • Requests to enter some place

May I come in?

• • • Giving permission to enter some place

Please come in.

You may enter (formal)

• • • Apologizing

I am sorry.

Sorry.

Please forgive me.

• • • Being grateful for something

Thank you

Thank you very much.

(The answer to thank you is also ‘Welcome’.  Or ‘You are welcome’.

• • • Leaving

Good bye.

• Drama

Role play people in these situations.  Act this out.  Knock on a door.  Open a door.  Invite someone in.  Ask permission to come in.

 

4. Juno and the Peacock

• Vocabulary –
  • • Animals – Peacock, eagle etc.
    • Adjectives – wide, magnificent, pretty, beautiful, special
• Comparison of adjectives
  • • Teach them what pretty, prettier, prettiest means or beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful
    • Show with your hands – wide, wider, widest/tall, taller, tallest/short, shorter, shortest
• Drama
  • • Fly like an eagle
    • Strut like a peacock
    • Admire someone

 

5. The Ants and the Grasshopper

• Vocabulary –
  • • Fruits and vegetables
    • Names of insects
    • Names of music instruments
• Drama
  • • Walk in line like the ants
    • Walk pretending to carry something heavy
    • Laze around like the grasshopper
    • Shiver in the cold
    • Dance and sing like the grasshopper
• Teach Opposites
  • • Cold – warm
    • Hardworking – lazy
    • Intelligent – stupid
    • Slow – fast
• Teach adverbs
  • • Call out these instructions to the children-

Walk fast

Walk slowly

Sing loud

Sing softly

 

6. The Wind and the Sun

• Vocabulary – Colours
  • • What are the colours in the picture?
• Comparison of adjectives –
  • • Just teach them what tight, tighter, tightest mean (no need to tell what they are called positive, comparative and superlative). Also

Strong, stronger, strongest

Powerful, more powerful, most powerful

• • • Activity

Tell the children to run fast, then faster

Pretend to hold a hat tight and then tighter

• Drama –
  • • Pretend to be the wind. Run around as if you are blowing down everything in sight.
    • Act like the man walking against the wind.

 

7. Look Before You Leap

• Vocabulary
  • • Seasons in the tropics: rainy season, monsoon, drought.
• Drama –
  • • Swim like fish. Hope like frogs.  Glide like swans.  Waddle like ducks.
• General knowledge
  • • Discuss the following –

What are the creatures that exist in ponds?  Who can stay only in water?  Who can stay on earth?  Who can live in both water and land?

 

8. The Boy Who Cried Wolf

• Vocabulary
  • • Animals: sheep, wolf, cows, horse, lamb, goat
• Classification – of animals
  • • Predators/Prey
    • Carnivores – animals who eat meat only/ Herbivores – animals who eat only plant-based food/ omnivores – those who eat meat and leafy things
    • Farm animals/ wild animals
• Drama –
  • • Run down the mountain like the boy did shouting ‘Wolf!’ or ‘Help!’
    • Act like the wolf scaring the sheep and the sheep running around scared.
    • Run up the mountain like the villagers, looking worried.