I’m sorry if your childhood wasn’t that great; deeply sorry. However, on the off chance you had a happy childhood or a tolerable one, I bet there are kid’s songs that when you hear as an adult, they take you way back to a time when all things were bright and beautiful and you didn’t have a single care in your heart. Songs that for a moment fill you with so much joy, peace, and bliss as you reminisce those precious, priceless, and golden childhood days. If you can relate to or understand what I’m implying, you can get the idea why nursery rhymes are so vital. You can give your child the same thing and even better, regardless of how your childhood was. I believe one of the greatest desires of a parent is to give their children a life that’s far much better than theirs was. This begins when your child is still a baby. Let me crack this down for you.
The Ability to Understand Things
Magnus Carlsen, the leading world chess champion, knew all the countries of the world, as well as their respective cities when he was just five years old. That gives you an idea of the kind of environment he was in as a child. It shows you that he was around an environment where he could learn these things. That his parents created an atmosphere for him where he could learn and do things that he was interested in. He learned to play chess the same way. By the time he was seven years old, he noticed that his father used to play a strange board game with his elder sister. He was curious and wanted to join in on the fun. As soon as he understood who the king and queen were and how to coordinate all the other pieces on the board, his brain activated. He could see patterns on the chessboard that neither his father nor sister realized. Soon he was beating them at the game as if they were the ones who were learning.
Nursery rhymes help your child to understand things this way. Children love singing and doing things. They are tiny adventurers. The world around them is still strange and they can’t resist the urge to familiarize themselves with it. Nursery rhymes are sweet to their ears, so they want to listen more. If you add actions into the mix, they will mimic those actions just as my nephew likes flapping his hands whenever he sees doves. They normally come to my house and he noticed them during one of his visits. Their wings normally make the flapping sound as they fly. The first time he noticed the sound he was a bit shocked and wondered what that was. I explained that it was a dove and it was flying away. He asked where it was going. I explained while making the flapping motion with my hands that the dove was going to visit its friends. Therefore, whenever they are around and they fly away, he associates the flapping sound with them, and he will always ask where the dove is going, and I always give the same answer; it’s going to visit its friends.
They Help Your Child Interact and Create bonds with Friends
Infants can be stubborn at times, particularly those below 5 years old, because by this age, most of them don’t know how to share or be nice. At times, they will be nice, and at other times, they will be mean. When they are mean, it is challenging to get them to be nice, especially if they have the habit of being mean. Nevertheless, the miracle of nursery rhymes is that they can get even the meanest infants to play nice with others. If an infant is particularly fond of a certain nursery rhyme, he or she can forget the attitude and join a group of other infants doing the rhyme. It’s the same thing when two enemies can be made to play nice if they find themselves together in a concert of a music band they both happen to like. At least as long as the band is playing, they will forget their differences.
They Advance Talking and Listening
Most infants below the age of three have not yet acquired the ability to speak fluently. Their tongues, lips, jaws, and mouth, in general, are still in the process of coordinating the muscles together. Baby rhymes help to quicken this process. First, they involve two key abilities: listening and speaking. When your child hears the rhymes, their ears become sensitive to the words of the rhyme as well as the tune or song of the rhyme. When they like it so much that they want to sing it with you, they will be exercising their ability to speak, sing, and hear. Things get more interesting if you add gestures into the mix because this further helps to improve the coordination of their motor skills.
Reading and Language
Remember that infants are very curious creatures. If they see you reading the rhyme from a book, they will wonder why you are looking at that thing while you rhyme. They will eventually piece together the fact that your rhyming or singing is connected with the book. Naturally, they will want to do the same because they love the song, so they will want to be able to look at the book and sing just like you. Moreover, if you rhyme different kids songs from different books, they will eventually realize that the different books mean different interesting rhymes. Just like that, your child can develop the love for books. Furthermore, the different books mean different rhymes, and the different rhymes mean more words for them to decode and understand. It also means more stories. This develops their vocabularies and even stimulates their imagination. Before you know it, they will be singing on their own or asking you questions regarding the various rhymes. For example, “Mommy, does Baa Baa Blackship have a brother?”
Back to the Past
Let me sign off with where I started. There are kid’s songs that when you here return you to a beautiful time when you were carefree. Similarly, nursery rhymes will give your child the very same effect when they are all grown up and life has messed them up a bit. Nursery rhymes are one of the most beautiful gifts that you can give your child and that’s why their importance will never fade. They are to your child not only a means to influence and quicken their learning ability but also a gateway to a period of their life when all things were bright and beautiful.