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This Little Piggy and Other Baby Games
Home » Early Learning » Early Math » This Little Piggy and Other Baby GamesPosted by Your Guide on March 1, 2006 8:32 PM
It may sound like singsong nonsense to you, but to your baby, these easy rhymes and rhythms lay the foundation for early math skills. Songs like “And Bingo Was His Name-O” teach children to wait for just the right moment to clap, and just the right time to sing the letters of Bingo’s name. Waiting for the right beat in the rhythm requires an innate method of counting. Almost every baby loves music and will dance, unprompted, when they hear a rhythm that moves them.
The rhyme, “One Two, Buckle My Shoe” teaches rhyme, rhythm, and simple counting. This nursery rhyme, and many others like it, teaches our children the very beginning of numerical math, which is a step beyond just hearing and keeping time to a rhythm. “This Old Man” is another counting song that reinforces the concepts of rhyme and rhythm but that also teaches simple counting.
No doubt you have heard of these songs and poems, but have probably never seen sheet music for them. The reason? Because we all know them. We learn them before we can read or write so there is no need for written music or lyrics.
Simple finger plays such as “Nine Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed,” and “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians,” are the very beginning of the concept of one to one correspondence. This skill allows us to touch one object and count, “one,” then touch the second object and count, “two.” Knowing that as we count, we touch one item at a time, and when we have touched them all, we have counted each one.
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