Baby Rhyme Time
Baby Rhyme Time
There are many benefits of regular music and songs for children and babies. In my experience, circle time is the perfect opportunity to regularly sing and explore music with children including babies. Unlike the 2-4 year olds who can cope with a 10 – 20 minute circle time up to three times a day, babies can manage around 5 – 10 minutes.
I suggest planning a morning session where you can support all babies in the baby room to come together and enjoy familiar songs, actions and musical instruments. This type of interaction encourages social communication development, speech and language skills and supports cognitive growth. The daily session does not need to be complex but could include the following:
Hello song – use this opportunity to say ‘hello’ to each baby, you could use bubbles to encourage eye contact.
Song basket – provide no more than 2 or 3 choices at a time, this helps babies to connect the puppet or object of reference to the song. Use familiar songs or rhymes and use signs or actions.
Shakers – support the babies to explore the shakers and sing the ‘shake shake this away’ song.
Beaters – support the babies to bang the drums to music or model fast, slow, quiet and loud drumming and encourage them to copy.
Pom Poms or fabrics – to music, encourage babies to hide, throw, shake, feel or hide their pom poms.
Sensory Ball – support babies to roll and catch the ball to music or to a song.
I suggest having only 3 or 4 elements to your baby rhyme time session and giving babies plenty of time to explore the sensory objects. Babies learn from repetition of fun engaging experiences, therefore I recommend sticking to the same songs, music and resources for a week at a time. Keeping to a loose structure will help babies anticipate what is coming next and will gradually help them to increase focus and attention.
If you are looking to introduce regular song time at home, song bags and puppets are a great way to get started. Bounce and rhyme time groups are enjoyable for both baby and parents, not only do they help to expand rhyme/ song choices but it's an easy way to meet other parents and carers.
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