Rhyme Time for local children

Thursday 21 November 2019

Students at the College of Further Education have been working on a project encouraging Guernsey's young children to have fun with nursery rhymes.

The Rhyme Time Rumble initiative was set up by the States Early Years Team, which suggested the college childcare pupils get involved.

"The students have a literacy unit and we know, just from Early Years, the importance of early literacy," explained Programme Leader for the College Early Years Department, Paula Grady. "I also want to get our students involved in live projects this year where they can do things for the community and people can gain from it."

Pictured: College of FE Childcare students with their creations.

After some thinking, Ms Grady came up with the idea of 'rhyme bags', which will be handed out to each of the 27 participating nurseries and preschools. Each of the bags contains a variety games, activities and pictures to get the children interested and better their learning.

"I did 'Incy Wincy Spider', so I put some colouring books in, I did spider with one to ten on so the children could do their counting, I put the actual nursery rhyme in so the practitioners can read it to the children and I did a sequence game so the children could learn to put it in order," said Mia Tapp who is currently working towards her Level 3 qualification in Childcare.

"I think it's a great way to get the children involved in a setting and learning new things," added her fellow student, Ellie Toussaint. "It's to help their emergent literacy and maths and get them involved in rhythm and sequence and things like that."

Pictured: Childcare Level Three student, Chloe Barneby.

The Guille-Alles Library has also been involved in the project, offering fun rhyming sessions for children of all ages.

"We've been doing these projects for the last few years, where we take a multi-agency approach to raising the profile of communication, language and literacy in our preschools and nurseries," said States Early Years Education Officer, Kate Hynes. "We work with the College of FE, the library, speech and language therapists, educational psychologists, our children centres, all our preschools and settings that want to be involved and child minders.

Pictured: Paula Grady.

"We feel nursery rhymes are a dying art and it's actually one of the really good prerequisite skills that children need to be able to hear a rhyme, maybe follow on a rhyme and use their working memory too."

It is hoped the participating nurseries and preschools will use the rhyming bags as inspiration for further interactive activities.

"It's absolutely vital for the children," continued Ms Grady. "Those early literacy and language skills are absolutely fundamental. Nursery rhymes and those songs and the fun aspect of it are their first early experience so it's vital that they get that!"

Pictured top: The contents of one of the rhyme bags.