Our daily rhymes

I think it is common knowledge that rhymes favor the development of language.
I have always had a tendency to make things rhyme for fun but since my daughter was born I surely do it even more. We started out with rhymes very early with songs and riddles. I sometimes had the feeling I was odd to sing "one two three four five, once I caught a fish alive..." to a two months old baby. That tiny baby used to smile at the song encouraging thus my silliness. Jokes apart, to my surprise, now that M is 12 months she always smiles at the sound of "one two three" and together with her smile of recognition, she points at her fingers.

Some of the songs we like:

In English:
Ring a ring o' roses
Old Mc'Donalds had a farm
Round the mulberry tree
Oranges and lemons
Ten little indians
Ten brown teddies
Twinkle, twinkle little star
Jack in the box


In Spanish:
cucú saltaba la rana
el caballo de cartón
canta pájaro lejano

In Catalan:
La gallina ponicana
Les oques van al camp
Una plata d'ensiam


We also have some books, mainly for counting, which contain rhymes. I specially like the Australian "One Woolly Wombat" and "An Old Oxford Ox".


There are of course some of my fav. lullabies. Songs we repeat every day.

Some of the daily repeated rhymes we have made up are:

When dressing:
One hand through the hole, the other hand through the other hole.
One sleeve off, the other sleeve off.
Toes with toes, heels with heels,
and sock up to the knees.

It's cold, very cold,
let's get some clothes.

We will now count to twenty-five and we will sleep all through the night (up to now my words have unfortunately had no effect).

All this repetition is, in my opinion, very important for language learning, and it has proofed pretty useful in our getting-dressed routine.

Do you have some rhymes you would like to share? I'd love to hear!!