Fingerplays, rhymes, and songs help young children become successful readers

Children who play with sounds in their preschool years are better prepared to read when they get to school. Reading specialists use the term “phonological awareness” to describe an early literacy skill that involves the ability to hear and manipulate small sounds in words. Most children who have difficulty in reading have trouble with phonological awareness. Reading specialists suggest that parents and caregivers play language games with their young children. They recommend that adults make up silly words, rhyme words, sort objects by beginning sound, and clap words or names in syllables. Librarians can model these games in storytime. But more importantly, we can share our treasure trove of fingerplays, action rhymes, and songs, and the many delightful rhyming picture books on our shelves.

We use rhymes and songs in every storytime. Not only do they support the development of phonological awareness, they expand vocabularies and help children associate words with their meanings and understand how language works. They provide movement opportunities for children between storytime books. They help build motor skills and listening skills. Best of all, they engage children, and they are fun!

Here’s a fingerplay we use with two- and three-year-olds: I have 10 little fingers, and they all belong to me / I can make them do things / Do you want to see? / I can close them up tight / I can open them wide / I can put them together / I can make them hide / I can make them jump high / I can make them jump low / I can fold them quietly / and hold them just so.

This popular fingerplay reinforces the young child’s understanding of the number 10, and several great words as well: close, tight, wide, high, low, fold. A child is much more likely to understand what fold or wide means when he actually folds his fingers or opens them wide.

Lots of rhymes and songs feature numbers or body parts: One, two, three, four, five / I caught a fish alive! / Six, seven, eight, nine, ten / I let him go again! / Why did I let him go? / Because he bit my finger so! / Which finger did he bite? / The little finger on the right!

We love to find rhymes and songs that extend the fun of a picture book or reinforce concepts introduced in the text. After reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, try this fingerplay: Let’s go to bed / the little caterpillars said (hold up one hand with fingers wide and wiggling) / and they tucked themselves into their beds (fold fingers up into a fist) / Each will awaken by and by (make your fingers start moving gently) / and each will be a lovely—butterfly! (open both hands wide and put together to make a fluttering butterfly).

One of the best songs for supporting phonological awareness is the old folk song “A-Hunting We Will Go”: Oh, a-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go / We’ll catch a fox / and put him in a box / and then we’ll let him go. Subsequent verses include a goat in a boat; frog/log; snake/cake; bear/chair; whale/pail; fish/dish. Encourage children to chime in with the appropriate rhymes, then invite them to make up their own verses. The children we know would be happy to sing this song at every storytime! We use it with babies, too, singing just a few verses and encouraging the adult to scoop up baby and playfully move him into the “box” or “boat.” A charming picture book version of this song is Oh, A-Hunting We Will Go (McElderry, 1974) by John Langstaff, with pictures by Nancy Winslow Parker.

Library collections are full of picture books that feature rhymes or songs. We also like The Lady With the Alligator Purse (Little, Brown, 1998) illustrated by Nadine Bernard Wescott, Miss Mary Mack: A Hand-Clapping Rhyme (Little, Brown, 1998) adapted by Mary Ann Hoberman, and Down by the Bay (Crown, 1987) by Raffi.

Here are some of our favorite source books for fingerplays, action rhymes, and songs: The Baby’s Game Book (Greenwillow, 2000) by Isabel Wilner; Diez Deditos = Ten Little Fingers (Dutton, 1997) by José-Luis Orozco; and Ring a Ring O’Roses: Fingerplays for Preschool Children, 11th edition (Flint Public Library, 2000), compiled and edited by Charles Hansen and Cynthia Stilley.