Candice: I’ve learnt something new over the Christmas period. I obviously know the importance of reading to everyone: vocabulary development, breadth of knowledge, for example, but I with a small child currently learning to speak didn’t realise the importance of nursery rhymes to this this development.
My daughter is nearly two and she is coming along with leaps and bounds. I used to watch other parents and grandparents singing along like nutters with their small children and would say to myself, ‘I’m never doing that’. But I am now the woman who can be heard singing ‘Baa Baa black sleep’ round the park. And why, because she is learning at every step and the singing means new spoken words which eventually leads to understanding written words.
How do I know this? Well she has a favourite teddy who has always been called ‘Teddy’ but a few weeks ago she started calling him ‘Teddy Bear’. We couldn’t work out why until she started singing ‘Round and round the garden…’ which of course leads to ‘…like a teddy bear’. She’s put two and two together and worked out that a teddy is a teddy bear. Now, when she sees a picture of a teddy its always called a teddy bear.
She loves singing, and if its not Round and round, its Baa Baa, or Old Macdonald. I wonder if she is aiming for a career as a pop star? Seriously, I’d like her to do something creative, knowing how much I love writing so I am hoping that the nursery rhymes and children’s book reading we are doing will lead to her having her head always in a book – like I was growing up.
nolanparker 