Make a nursery rhyme singing basket for babies, toddlers and preschoolers to enjoy singing their favourite songs with parents and care-givers! Fantastic for early language development and creativity for the very smallest children and a great activity for children learning English as an additional language too.

I recently wrote about the fantastic benefits of rhyming songs and stories in early literacy development, and there are many simple ways to encourage more of these activities in everyday life. From early babyhood we have always sung nursery rhymes and familiar childhood songs with our little ones, and adapted many to become part of our everyday routines such as “this is the way we tidy up/ brush our teeth/ pick up toys”etc to the tune of “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush.”

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We have so many little toys and finger puppets in the home now that it was easy to pop them into a basket and make a nursery rhyme singing basket for baby boy to start enjoying. The addition of some singing and story props to everyday singing brings the songs to life and helps develop further skills too, such as recognising and naming objects, simple story sequencing and basic motor grasp.

Putting the basket together was also a lovely task for his older siblings to help me with and a great way to get everyone involved. They remembered their own favourite nursery rhymes fondly and then went to help me find an object or character to represent each one.

Contents of our nursery rhyme singing basket:

black sheep finger puppet

silver star finger puppet

cat, dog, rabbit, duck and pig finger puppets

bus toy

boat toy

gold coin

fabric flower

[Amazon affiliate links: there are lots more puppets in this lovely range too!]

There are lots more things that you could add and we may take some out and put others in when we find them and think of some more favourites soon!

Then we quite simply, used the nursery rhyme singing basket to find a prop to match a song, and start singing together! Baby loved exploring the contents first of all, and looked through it as a new treasure basket! Then when we started singing he was delighted and waved his star to Twinkle Twinkle, and loved driving the bus back and forth on the floor when we sang The Wheels on the Bus!

It’s also so crucial to introduce clapping and actions with these familiar songs, as those help to teach a sense of rhythm and steady beat too. So a lovely little combination of both should encourage lots of love and joy for more nursery rhymes and singing time together.

Other songs we sing with this basket are:

Mary Mary quite contrary

Baa Baa Black sheep

Twinkle Twinkle little star

The wheels on the bus

Old MacDonald

5 little ducks went swimming one day

Hey diddle diddle

Row, row, row your boat

Sing a song of sixpence

It would be so lovely to create one of these baskets and give it as a gift for a newborn or 1st birthday present, along with a favourite CD or book of nursery rhymes to share!

See all our other BABY PLAY ACTIVITIES here.

And our EARLY LITERACY PLAY ideas for loads more hands on ideas too!

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