Nursery Rhymes! (Physical Benefits)

Ok, we’ve talked about so many benefits that nursery rhymes can have to our children. Language development, cognitive development, social and emotional development. Believe it or not, there’s more! Nursery rhymes promote physical development too!

• Many nursery rhymes have actions associated with them. Think I’m a Little Teapot, If You’re Happy and You Know It, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Kids are working on fine and gross motor skills as they attempt to learn these actions and master them over time. 
• In an earlier video we talked about how nursery rhymes inspire imaginative play and how great that is for cognitive development. Well, moving their bodies around as they act out the stories from nursery rhymes is also a physical activity with physical benefits too! (Jack and Jill might need to go up and down that hill lots of times!)
• Finally, children are often motivated to try and repeat nursery rhymes because they are short and catchy -- not only is this good for their language development like we talked about on Monday -- they are also developing their mouth and tongue muscles by repeating the sounds from the rhymes!