Are you starting a Nursery Rhyme theme in your preschool classroom or homeschool? Keep reading for the most engaging Nursery Rhyme preschool activities around!
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NURSERY RHYMES PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES
Nursery rhymes have been passed down through countless generations and are a fantastic way to teach your little ones to read, whether you’re homeschooling or teaching in a preschool or kindergarten classroom! They are stories that contain a beginning, middle, and end (sequencing) and they contain rhymes that are fun to read and memorize.
Little ones get so excited when participating in activities that introduce them to Jack & Jill, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, and others. This leads to interactive play and STEM exploration. So let’s get ready to learn silly rhymes and build new skills at the same time!
Keep reading for over 20 nursery rhyme activities for your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students. These ideas include literacy, math, fine and gross motor skills, art, and more. Grab your printables for math & literacy here.
If you want a copy of my yearly themes (including an editable version where you can type in your own themes), check out this freebie. (*Please note: You will need to download this file to your computer and then open it with Adobe in order to add your own themes. You cannot add your themes from your web browser.)
NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
Before you get started with your Nursery Rhymes theme, make sure you have your books all ready to go! You can check out our favorite books for this theme in this post.
Or you can just use the nursery rhymes printables that are included in my Nursery Rhymes Activity Pack! I’ve included printables for: Hey Diddle Diddle, Jack & Jill, Little Miss Muffet, Hickory Dickory Dock, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Itsy Bitsy Spider, & Humpty Dumpty.
Along with the Nursery Rhyme printables above, these vocabulary cards are so helpful to this unit because they include many words that may be new to your little ones (like fetch and tuffet). Your little ones can find a card that you have hidden in a sensory bin or around the room, say and trace the word, then match it on the Write the Room or Color the Room Printable.
This activity can be used two ways. Little ones can choose a Nursery Rhyme picture card and place small manipulatives on the Ten Frame to show the number, or you can put manipulatives on the Ten Frame and have your little ones find the Nursery Rhyme card with the matching number. Either way works to build number sense & one-to-one correspondence.
HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
ABC order is always good for little ones to practice. You can start with them singing the ABC song (slowly to avoid “elemnop” haha!) Then, for this activity, they will choose a card and fill in the spaces with the letters that follow the first one. There are cards for uppercase and lowercase so they can practice both. Can they put all the cards in order? If they do, they will notice that the pictures show the sequence of the Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme!
For this activity, little ones will choose a cat picture card and count how many there are, then they will put that number in the box above the card. Next, they will find a fiddle card, count them and write the number in the box. Finally, they will decide if there are enough, too many, or too few fiddles on the card so that each cat gets one fiddle. Can they tell your how many more fiddles are needed or how many are extra? This activity promotes critical thinking skills & number sense in a fun, play-based way!
JACK AND JILL NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken language. This is a precursor to reading and must be intentionally developed during the preschool and kindergarten years. This is an oral-only activity that gives students the chance to work on phonemic awareness skills by listening to a word card that you read and decide if it has the beginning sound of /j/. If it does, they can do a jumping jack and place the word card on the Jack and Jill mat.
This is a fun activity that will improve gross motor skills! After reciting the Jack & Jill nursery rhyme with your little one, they will be replacing “went” up the hill with different exercises (such as lunges or leg raises). They will roll a dice, say the number, and do exercises that coincide with that number. So if they roll a 4, they can say “Jack and Jill did lunges up the hill” while they do 4 lunges. Then, they will place that amount of water buckets on the mat.
LITTLE MISS MUFFET NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
Matching uppercase and lowercase letters is always a great activity for your little ones to practice. They will choose a lowercase letter bowl and put it on Miss Muffet’s lap and find the uppercase spider to match. Can they tell you other words that start with the letter sound? For more fun, they can pretend to eat the bowl of food and run away when they put the spider on the mat!
For this activity, your little ones will slide the number strip through the opening until one number is showing. They will name the number and use small manipulatives to build it on the mat. Then, they will say and build the number that is two less and the one that is two more. You can also talk about even & odd numbers if they’re ready for that!
This is a great hands-on activity to show your little ones about Miss Muffet’s favorite, food: curds and whey! First, you boil some milk and vinegar until the curds separate from the whey. Then you will strain the curds from the whey. Will your little ones want to taste them so they can be like Little Miss Muffet? (Full directions are in my Nursery Rhymes Activity Pack!)
HICKORY DICKORY DOCK NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
Your little one will be working with word families in this activity. They will choose a clock with a word family ending, sound it out, and choose a clock top with a letter to make a word. Is it a real word or a nonsense word? Have them find the picture card of the word if it is real, or place it on the nonsense side of the mat if it’s not.
This activity helps your little one with positional words. They will place mouse cards (that have different positions written on them) near your homemade clock (below). Your little one can say the Hickory Dickory Dock nursery rhyme and replace “run” up the clock with the different positions, like “The mouse went on top of the clock.” You can also play “Mouse Says” like “Simon Says”, and have your little one put the mouse cards around the room. Another possibility is to hide the cards around the clock and have your little one find them and tell you where they are in relation to the clock.
This Grandfather clock is used for the above activity. Make it using a cardboard box with the top cut off, a white paper plate plate with a clock face drawn on it, and a pendulum made out of yellow construction paper. Your little one can write their name going down the pendulum for name-writing practice!
MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
Have your little ones recite “Mary had a Little Lamb”. This activity has them replacing “Mary” with their own names and choosing a different fleece color and a different object to compare it to, such as “Henry had a little lamp whose fleece was red as a truck.” They will write the new nursery rhyme on the lines, color the lamb, and draw themselves next to the lamb. They can add more details to their picture for more creativity!
This activity has your little ones looking at lamb cards and estimating how many cotton balls (or mini marshmallows) they will need to cover the lamb. They will write that number in the box. Then, they will place the cotton balls (or mini marshmallows) on the lamb picture and write that number in the second box. Is their estimate too high (by how many), too low (by how many), or just right? This is another great activity to develop number sense.
ITSY BITSY SPIDER NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
This is a fun board game that reinforces beginning letter sounds, an important part of phonemic awareness. You and your little ones will take turns rolling a dice and moving that many spaces. Wherever they land, they will say the name of the picture and its beginning sound. If they are able, they can tell you the letter that represents that sound. Can they tell you more words that begin with that sound? Keep going until somebody wins!
Subitizing is the ability to identify a number without having to count all the items, such as with a dice. Since spiders have eight legs, little ones will be working on subitizing the number 8. They will roll a cube with different picture sides that represent the number 8 and place a small manipulative on the matching picture until someone gets five in a row. Bingo!
This Itsy Bitsy Spider craft is a great hands-on project to improve fine motor skills. First, trace your little one’s hands on black construction paper. They will cut them out removing the thumbs and overlapping them on a paper plate. They will then punch holes around the outside and thread black yarn across the plate to form a spider web. Now they have their own Itsy Bitsy Spider!
HUMPTY DUMPTY NURSERY RHYME ACTIVITIES
Humpty Dumpty is a great nursery rhyme to practice sequencing because it has a beginning, middle, and end. After saying the nursery rhyme together, your little one will cut out the different Humpty Dumpty boxes and put them in order from left to right. Then, they can say the rhyme again pointing to each picture as they go. This builds oral language skills as well as sequencing skills.
This activity has your little ones working with shapes. First, they can play a memory game to match the different shape cards. Next, they will place the matched shape cards on the Humpty Dumpty mat in the box and replace “Dumpty” with the shape word when they say the nursery rhyme again. So instead of “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” they could say “Humpty Triangle sat on a wall.” Finally, they will make the shape out of play dough (or draw it) and place it on the wall.
This experiment uses a hard boiled egg, a ziplock bag and different materials around the room that can be put in the bag to cushion Humpty Dumpty when he falls off of the wall. They can try items like a towel, bubble wrap, feathers, or rice. Have them hypothesize whether or not Humpty will break before dropping it. Were they correct? Which item protected Humpty the best?!
Nursery Rhymes often include “numbers” or things you can count, so grab these number cards for your Nursery Rhyme theme! They are a great tool to help your little one practice saying and counting the numbers 1-20.
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NURSERY RHYMES PRESCHOOL & PRE-K FUN
I hope these ideas helped you fill-in your Nursery Rhyme lesson plans for your preschool classroom or homeschool! All of the printables for this unit can be found in my Nursery Rhyme Preschool Activity Pack.
What types of Nursery Rhyme preschool activities do you plan for your littles? Do you have any fun activities that would be great to add to this list? Comment below or find me on Instagram [@littleslovelearningblog] and let me know!
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Happy Learning!
