Monday, December 2, 2013

Nursery Rhymes


A post by Katy Gilmore over at her spirits rose with a picture of a pair of pockets (they weren't always sewn into garments) got me to thinking about nursery rhymes -- who else remembers Lucy Locket who lost her pocket?

Do people still read nursery rhymes to their children? Or have Sesame Street and all the ingenious electronic toys replaced Humpty Dumpty as a teaching tool? 


I know that I was read nursery rhymes -- I can still repeat many of them. And I'm pretty sure that I read them to my older boy -- although he learned to read so early (at two and a half) that he quickly moved on to bigger and better things.  

My younger son, as I recall, had better things to do than sit around being read to by dear old mum ('What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?')  He had an older brother and cousin doing fun stuff with action figures and Stretch Armstrong -- no Miss Muffet for him! 

I don't have grandchildren so don't know -- are nursery rhymes incorporated in children's programming and electronic games?  Do kindergarten classes sing them? Or are they too busy being prepped for testing?

 Are Bo Peep and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, Mary and her little lamb still a part of the common currency of childhood or have they faded away to those green pastures of yesterday?

What do you think?
 
All images are from the internet-- mostly Wikipedia,  and are, I believe, out of copyright...
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10 comments:

Ms. A said...

I read them to my kids and tried to read them to my older grandchildren, when they could sit still long enough. I fear all the electronic stuff has taken their interest away from things of the past. *sigh

Ms. A said...

Forgot to mention it looks different around here!

Brian Miller said...

we read nursery rhymes to the boys...but we had plenty of action figure action as well..ha...funny i was just talking yesterday about stretch armstrong while we were at the flea market...

Thérèse said...

We read them to our kids and they still remember the words... we'll see about it with the new generation if there is one :-)

Thérèse said...

And we moved with Humpty Dumpty and Co neatly tucked with other children's books.

Barbara Rogers said...

My grands have all kinds of story books, the littlest is still 6, including the nursery rhymes...but there are certainly new and wonderful stories for kids also. I had sons with nursery rhymes and then GI Joe's...never heard of Stretch Armstrong, my blessing perhaps!

Jime said...

Joan has sent some to our Great Grand Daughter Peyton. We will go to see her Sunday for her fourth birthday. Such a great time.

Gwen said...

I, too learned all the nursery rhymes as a kid, I did say some to my children and my mom, who blessedly kept my children while I worked ( much better than daycare!, also passed them on. However, she gave a couple of them a modern update, even though she was of the Greatest Generation, not the baby boomer Women's Lib group! Here's an example:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses, and all
the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together
again.
So--The Queen did it!

For the longest time, my kids didn't realize what she had done!

Miss_Yves said...

Oh! Lovely!
I know some English nursery rhymes by some plots of Agatha Christie's novels!

Carol Bryner said...

I love reading your blog, Vicki. I heard about it through my friend Katy Gilmore, whose blog you mention in this post.
I often try to recite nursery rhymes or sing old songs with my grandsons, but am occasionally thwarted by my incomplete memory of the words and have to resort to Google. Yesterday as I was trying to teach them "Frosty the Snowman" I was stumped again, but my grandson said "get your phone Gramie!" so the old seems dependent on the new and vice versa.