Nursery Rhyme Essay

Nursery rhymes provide a unique learning context for preschoolers in regard to their emergent literacy and musical development. According to Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory (1978), in order for learning to occur, children must face challenges, and adults must provide support to guide them toward mastery of new skills. The current pilot study began with the aim of documenting teachers’ reactions to nursery rhymes in relation to their level of difficulty. Eighty-eight kindergarten teachers were asked to use the new nursery rhymes in their classrooms. Then, they were asked fill out a questionnaire to document their reactions and their ratings of the linguistic and musical difficulty. Teachers’ reactions were measured by their overall impression

Many generations of children have learned and recited nursery rhymes in their homes and schools. However, over the last few years, more pressure has been put on kindergarten teachers to apply educational curricula and programs that promote the explicit teaching of specific skills. This situation could lead kindergarten teachers to put aside more traditional interactive activities such as nursery rhymes (Kenney, 2005). In fact, when they learn nursery rhymes, children face linguistic and musical challenges that trigger their cognitive development through pleasant social interactions mediated by adults and peers (Gauthier & Lejeune, 2008). Nursery rhymes provide a unique learning context in which can also be embedded explicit instruction that promotes early literacy and musical development in young children (Gauthier & Lejeune, 2008, Justice & Kaderavek, 2004, Bolduc, Lefebvre, & Pirkenne, 2012). The rhythmic and often non-nonsensical nature of nursery rhymes would catalyze this development, because it leads the child to focus on rhythm and sonority of words rather than on their meaning (de Santis, 1986; Kenney, 2005). Until now, no studies have been conducted to observe how today’s teachers react to linguistic and musical challenges in nursery rhymes in their classes. The current pilot study aims to provide preliminary answers to that question, using a questionnaire to document teachers’

They are often a source of shared pleasure between educators and children in preschool and kindergarten settings. Through this interaction, nursery rhymes are thought to play an essential role in the processes of transmission and learning (Gauthier & Lejeune, 2008). Dunst, Merter, and Hamby (2011) reviewed 12 studies on the relationships between nursery rhymes and emergent literacy development. The studies indicated that nursery rhyme experience and knowledge were predictive of both phonological processing skills and print-related outcomes in young children. In fact, knowledge of nursery rhymes seems to foster children 's phonological awareness, which, in turn enhances their literacy skills in school (Bryant, Bradley, Maclean & Crossland, 1989; Maclean, Bryant & Bradley, 1987; Harper, 2011). The fact that nursery rhymes are more about rhythm and sonority of words than their actual meaning could explain why phonological awareness skills are easily enhanced by nursery rhymes. Children enjoy the sonority and rhythm of words in nursery rhymes in spite of their incomplete, or even poor, knowledge of their meaning (De Santis, 1986; Zachok, 1992). When their attention is shifted away from the meaning, children can focus more easily on the phonological features of words (van Kleeck, 1995). In fact, the semantic features of words can interfere with their phonological