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Almost every child has grown up learning to love and enjoy singing nursery rhymes. However many parents including kids are unaware that ‘Jack and Jill’ and other popular nursery rhymes have a phenomenal amount of history and hidden meaning. They are loaded with political and historical references and the history of these nursery rhymes can be traced back to at least the 17th century.

Hardly anyone in that era knew how to read or write except for the rich.  Most rhymes were started by common folk, to pass down information from one generation to the next, which talked about important events in the lives of those people. However children today are more interested in how catchy the tune is and the various actions they can do while singing a nursery rhyme.

By exposing kids to the joy of nursery rhymes, they can learn to appreciate music at a young age. Hand actions and dancing gets them to be more active, in turn adding to the excitement.  Interactive rhymes like ‘Ring a Ring o Rosies’ and ‘Oranges and Lemons’ can be an excellent group activity for young children while ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ or even ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ gets them to make funny faces and loads of hand actions. These rhymes bring an element of fun into a child’s learning.

Parents and kindergarten teachers encourage the singing of nursery rhymes because they can help children develop more quickly especially as toddlers. They enable children to get better at their language skills and become effective communicators.  As children grow older a great activity parents can do with children is find the history of rhymes they sang all through their childhood.  This helps them get acquainted with the art of reading and the joy of history.