Nursery Rhyme Units

With being a special education teacher you always have to be on your toes changing materials, be ready to quick change something on a lesson because the students don't understand the concept and if they catch on to the concept really fast and you need to challenge them more. I teach a wide variety of ages from birth to 21. Granted, I'm only in the elementary building and the highest grade level that's in our school is 6th grade. With also being the early childhood special education teacher, I feel like I'm always having to find different materials or what I'm finding is pinpointing the kinds of topics I want the students to grasp. I was at a loss and didn't honestly know where I needed to go from there. I talked with the kindergarten teacher finding out more with what the students need to learn with the changes in our reading curriculum. The curriculum now is a lot harder then before. She stated that she used to do nursery rhymes that would focus on teaching students a nursery rhyme, identifying letter, sequencing, numbers and rhyming. I took that idea and ran with it.

My first step was determine if I wanted this to surround a certain theme. Looking through my books, I found the "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" book. I really liked the idea of the coconut tree and having coconuts with letters on them. Then I would place them on the tree and as we learned so many letters I would drop them to the bottom of the tree like the letters fell off the tree.

Once I picked my theme, I went to my principal and asked if I could pain the actual tree on my wall otherwise every year I would be remaking the tree and wasting a whole bunch of paper. The kindergarten teacher helped me with the painting. We found a picture of a palm tree, copied it on over head transparencies and put it on the wall. We then traced the outline and the painting began. It did take more then one coat of paint to make sure there were no white spots.

This is a picture of the wall before we started the project. I did put a pocket chart on the hall with the concept of yes or no. Which means.....the letter we are working on, we will look at our name on a card and determine yes the letter is in my name or no it's not.

The starting of painting the tree. (I roped in the kindergarten teacher to help me!) :-)

This is what the tree looked like on e it was painted.

The next part and was the hardest part is finding all the materials including, tracing letter activities, sequence cards, puppets, art projects, stories and magnetic letters. I also found that having to pick a nursery rhyme to go with a each letter was challenging. As of today, I identified every nursery rhyme I am using with the letters of the alphabet. I found this process easier with making a word document with the letters of the alphabet and writing down what nursery rhyme I used help me make sure I didn't use the rhyme more then once. Once I gathered the materials I put them in plastic folders and put them in a drawer that I designated to that letter. With my drawers I did put more then one letter in a drawer.

I labeled each folder with the nursery rhyme on the top, so I wasn't having to open the folder every time I switched letter.

As I am finding the materials, I looked around on the internet for coconuts with the letters on them or coconuts that I could program myself. I was lucky enough to find it already done. I printed them on card stock and then had them laminated. When looking for materials, I looked for nursery rhyme lesson plans, activity ideas, the actual nursery rhymes and if there was a book that went along with it. Between the nursery rhyme books that I had and with the materials in them and the internet, I came up with quite a few materials for the different nursery rhymes. With my search I looked for some sort of puppets or something for the students to use to recall events from the story. I started with the idea of a felt board, but looking around that was going to get expensive. I then found a nursery rhyme packet that after each nursery rhyme, came the characters that were in the story. I once again printed those and laminated them.The process of cutting them all out and sorting them. Yes, it does seem a lot of work, but in the end it was a lot cheaper then completing a felt board.

The beginning of the puppets

Once I was done with that, I had to come up with how I was going to have students show these. Whether I was going to have them just hold them up or use magnets and have them putting them on a cookie sheet. Well, for the size do the pieces it wouldn't work. Then my next thought was a white board and if that was magnetic. As we all know it's not. Then, I figured out that I could have two magnets connect to each other. So, I found my old white board and sectioned off a place to make it magnetic. There is paint out there that you can spray, but I still wanted to be able to use the white board. I am a person that things have to have an order and spaced evenly. Granted I can't always make it happen. I started measuring with the help of the kindergarten teacher of the area I wanted it. I will tell you before I show you I did. It make my lines straight. I just kind of drew lines to mark the area. As I went to put the magnets up, I held the puppets in the general area I wanted them.

I wanted to also have the numbers on the board so they knew 1st, 2nd, etc.

With the cut out numbers.

I am the type of person that is very organized and likes to know where everything is at and at my finger tips. I got these bins from thirty one and hooked them to the wall with 3M hooks.

Here's what it looked like with the names in place.

This is where I sit when I read to the students, but do majority of the teaching on the floor next to them.

Finally......the title is put up!

I hope in someway I have inspired you to come up with new units and fun activities for your students.

I am pasting my list below that I used to help keep track of the nursery rhymes I used.  Feel free to use the list or modify to your liking!  :-) 

Nursery Rhymes Coordinating with the Letters of the Alphabet

A: Way Up High in the Apple Tree

B: Baa Baa Black Sheep

C: Hickory Dickory Dock

D: Old Mother Hubbard

E: Little Bo Peep

F: Once I Caught A Fish Alive

G: Mary, Mary How Does your Garden Grow

H: Humpty Dumpty

I: Itsy Bitsy Spider

J: Jack and Jill

K: Lucy Locket

L: Mary Had a Little Lamb

M: Little Miss Muffet

N: Jack Be Nimble

O: Polly Put the Tea Kettle On

P: Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater

Q: The Queen of Hearts

R: Three Blind Mice

S: Pop Goes the Weasel

T: I’m a Little Teapot

U: Little Boy Blue

V: Five Vipers

W: The Old Woman Who Live in a Shoe

X: Sing a Song of Sixpence

Y: Hey Diddle Diddle

Z: Fuzzy Wuzzy

Happy Learning

Shannon