• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Shop
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Courses
    • Teaching Every Reader
    • Teaching Every Writer
  • Subscriber Freebies
  • About
  • Contact

The Measured Mom

Education resources for parents and teachers

  • Alphabet
  • Reading
    • Printable Books
    • Pre-Reading
    • Balanced Literacy
    • Phonics
    • Sight Words
    • Comprehension
    • Fluency
    • Vocabulary
  • Writing
    • Grammar
    • Handwriting
    • Spelling
    • Writing in Pre-K
    • Writing Workshop in K-3
  • Math
    • Counting
    • Number Recognition
    • Addition & Subtraction
    • Colors, Shapes & Patterns
    • Visual Discrimination
    • Time, Money & Measurement
    • Place Value
    • Graphs
    • Multiplication & Division
    • Fractions
    • Problem Solving
  • Book Lists
    • Letter of the Week
    • Early Childhood Themes
    • Pre-Reading Skills
    • Math Concepts
    • Writing Mentor Texts
    • Versions of Familiar Tales
    • Holidays and Seasonal
    • History
    • Leveled Book Lists
  • Membership
Home
  • Shop
  • Blog
    • Alphabet
    • Reading
    • Writing
    • Math
    • Book Lists
  • Podcast
  • Courses
    • Teaching Every Reader
    • Teaching Every Writer
  • Subscriber Freebies
  • About
  • Membership
  • Contact

PSPKK123 March 5, 2016  •  6 Comments

How to teach concepts of print with nursery rhymes

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Nursery rhymes aren’t just fun to sing. They’re also a great way to teach pre-reading skills!

(This post contains affiliate links.)

“My child knows his letters and sounds.  Is he ready to read?”

When readers ask me this question,  I direct them to my most popular post, “5 things kids need before they’re ready to sound it out.”  In that post, my number one tip is to help children develop concepts of print.

What are “concepts of print,” anyway?

Concepts of print are basic understandings about letters, words, sentences, and books.

  • Knowing how to hold books correctly and turn pages in the right direction
  • Understanding the difference between a letter, word, and sentence
  • Knowing that each word on a page represents a spoken word
  • Understanding that text is read from left to right

Don’t kids develop concepts of print naturally?

Sometimes.  If you read a lot to your child, he may internalize these concepts without any special teaching from you.  But for many children, explicit instruction is necessary.

We have six kids.  I taught my oldest three to read before kindergarten, starting with a fun preschool reading curriculum,  books I created myself, and loads of free phonics printables.  I’m excited to get started with my Four, but unlike the older three he needs more work with concepts of print.

We’ve been using my free Color Me Readers, Voice to Print packs, and pocket chart sentences.  He’s made incredible progress!   But I wanted something more…

So I created my new Nursery Rhymes Concepts of Print Pack!

Why nursery rhymes?

There’s a reason nursery rhymes have been around for hundreds of yours.  They’re catchy.  Kids love them.  Best of all, they’re easy to remember.  (Want even more reasons?  Check out ten reasons why today’s kids still benefit from learning nursery rhymes.)

Tell me about this pack!

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

The pack comes with ten printable emergent readers (in both color and black & white).  When your child already knows the rhyme, he can recite it while pointing to the dots under each word.

I noticed that my Four had trouble when reading “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” He wanted to make “diamond” two words, since it has two syllables. But then he ended up on the word “the” too soon.  Since he knows how to read that word, he got stuck and started the page over.

Same problem.

“This is too hard! I don’t want to do this anymore!”

I knew we needed to start with a different activity from the pack.

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

I printed the pocket chart sentences, and on a different day we put the rhyme together.  Seeing the words as separate cards really helped it click.

He loves reading with our fun pointer, and he did great! Each time he got stuck (on “above” and “diamond”) he started the sentence over and was able to see that each of those words is a single word.

(And when I gave him the book to read afterward, he read it perfectly.)

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

This is another great hands-on activity.  I sit next to him, read each line of the poem, and he builds it with linking cubes – using one word per cube. Afterward, he counts the blocks and I write the number of words for each line.

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

Here’s a simple letter, word, and sentence sort.

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

When I told my son to circle a word, underline a sentence, or cross out a letter, it opened my eyes to what he does and doesn’t know about concepts of print.  He’s getting better and better at these activity sheets!

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

Here’s another page we did together.  I read each line, and he used beginning sound clues to figure out the missing words.

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

What a great printable for teaching how to follow text!  My Four starts at the green dot and moves to the right, reciting each line. Then he moves his finger to the green dot on the next line and recites again.

It's SO important to teach nursery rhymes to preschoolers. These concepts of print activities feature ten different nursery rhymes!

This just may be my favorite activity from the pack. It was inspired by the Concepts of Print pages from this fabulous and affordable preschool reading curriculum.  Each rhyme comes with a “Glue and Draw” page in which your child reconstructs a sentence from a rhyme and illustrates it.

My Four cuts out the words, I tell him the sentence, and he rebuilds it by finding each word using beginning sound clues.

At first, he chose the word “what” when trying to find “wonder.”  (Because they both start with “w,” of course.)  Then he looked more closely.  “This one is ‘wonder’ because it ends with an r.”

Such a wonderful lightbulb moment!  Your child will have lots of them when you use the activities in this pack.

GET ACTIVITIES FOR 10 POPULAR RHYMES!

Nursery Rhyme Concepts of Print Pack – Set 1

$15.00

Since children love nursery rhymes, these classic poems are the perfect text for teaching concepts of print. This file contains 280 pages of printable activities featuring ten different nursery rhymes. The file includes instructions for how to teach concept of word, voice to print matching, and more.

Buy Now

Free Reading Printables for Pre-K-3rd Grade

Join our email list and get this sample pack of time-saving resources from our membership site! You'll get phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension resources ... all free!

Filed Under: Reading, Pre-reading Tagged With: kindergarten, nursery rhymes, concepts of print, Pre-K

You May Also Enjoy These Posts:

3 tips for improving fluencyHow to motivate struggling readersR-controlled vowel words game
Science experiments and STEM activities for every season
Fine motor activities that get kids ready to write

Reader Interactions

6 Comments

  1. Naomi

    March 6, 2016 at 8:30 pm

    This makes me happy!!! First, because I feel there are so few activities for nursery rhymes (if I had time, I’d write up a whole well-rounded, hands-on based curriculum!) and second, because I am looking for things like this to use at home with my children as well as in my preschool classroom. This is right where we are right now (two preschoolers at our house right now) and it looks like fun! For anyone else reading this, I would highly recommend that CD of nursery rhyme songs…I bought it last summer to use in my classroom this year and all the kids know the rhymes so much faster with the songs AND the actions together, rather than just the songs. And even with just the songs last year, I think most of them didn’t even know them just singing them once a week in our class. Thanks for a great article and most likely a great bunch of activities! I can’t wait to start. 🙂

    Reply to this comment
    • Anna Geiger

      March 9, 2016 at 6:37 am

      Thank you so much, Naomi! I think nursery rhymes are such a great learning tool – so easy to learn and there are so many possibilities with them. We’ve been listening to the CD in the car the last few days. Such a fun one!

      Reply to this comment
  2. Sharon

    March 15, 2018 at 11:01 am

    Love these ideas.

    Reply to this comment
    • Anna G

      March 15, 2018 at 6:48 pm

      I’m so glad, Sharon!

      Reply to this comment
  3. Sarah

    April 19, 2018 at 4:45 pm

    My son loved this pack! He is a reluctant learner, but he really enjoyed this. What is the next step? Any recommedations?

    Reply to this comment
    • Anna G

      April 28, 2018 at 5:43 pm

      Hi Sarah! If you send me an email – anna(at)themeasuredmom(dot)com you can tell me exactly what he knows regarding letters, sounds, sight words, etc. and I can give you a next step. 🙂

      Reply to this comment

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Grade Level Key

  • PS Preschool (ages 2-3 years)
  • PK Pre-K (ages 4-5 years)
  • K Kindergarten
  • 1 1st grade
  • 2 2nd grade
  • 3 3rd grade

Hello, I’m Anna!

Welcome to The Measured Mom. I’m so glad you’re here!

Meet Our Team

Free Reading Printables for Pre-K-3rd Grade

Join our email list and get this sample pack of time-saving resources from our membership site! You'll get phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension resources ... all free!

Shop these popular reading resources!

Editable Seasonal Sight Word Game – MEGA PACK!

$24.00

Phonics Books & Games – Complete Set

$49.00

Reading response sheets & Early chapter book lists

$18.00

Shop All Resources

Members get more!

The Measured Mom Plus is the perfect online membership for Pre-K to third grade educators.

Learn More

Love Freebies?

Subscribing to our email newsletter is completely free. And when you do, you'll get access to our library of subscriber freebies! Sign up below to get access to a wonderful variety of math and literacy resources.

Join our online courses and get the tools you need to teach every learner in K-2!

Confidently teach every reader in your classroom. Still have time to live your life.

Learn More

Get everything you need to teach writing well, including over 200 ready-to-use lessons.

Learn More

Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher

Check out these recent podcast episodes:

  • My reaction to Emily Hanford’s article, “At a Loss for Words”
  • What are the reading wars?
  • Introduction to the science of reading podcast series
More Episodes

Join the conversation over on Facebook! We have three separate groups for Pre-K through grade 3.

Join Facebook Group

Check out these FREE email courses...

Get strategies and tools to teach a particular topic with a free 5-day email series! Just click an image to sign up. We recommend signing up for just one at a time.

For Pre-K Educators

How to teach letters and sounds to preschoolers

How to teach letters and sounds to preschoolers

Learn my must-follow tips for teaching the alphabet in this free 5-day email series!

How to teach phonological & phonemic awareness

How to teach phonological & phonemic awareness

Learn how to develop this important pre-reading skill with a free 5-day email series!

How to teach preschool math

How to teach preschool math

Learn exactly what to teach your preschoolers in this free 5-day series!

For Kinder & 1st Grade Educators

How to teach kids to sound out words

How to teach kids to sound out words

Learn my top strategies for teaching kids to "sound it out"

How to teach sight words

How to teach sight words

Get strategies and tools for teaching sight words to young learners!

Tips for teaching phonics

Tips for teaching phonics

Sign up for our free 5-day email series to learn what phonics skills to teach and how to structure your phonics lessons!

For 2nd & 3rd Grade Educators

How to build reading fluency

How to build reading fluency

Learn smart strategies for helping your learners become fluent readers with this free 5-day series!

How to teach writing in 2nd & 3rd grade

How to teach writing in 2nd & 3rd grade

Learn the most important writing skills to teach to 2nd & 3rd graders in this free 5-day series!

How to build reading comprehension

How to build reading comprehension

Discover the essential reading comprehension strategies for 2nd & 3rd grade and how to teach them!

“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” –Matthew 6:33

Copyright © 2021 The Measured Mom •  All rights reserved  •  Privacy & Disclosure Statement  •  Site Design by Emily White Designs