These 10 nursery rhymes for toddlers and kids include just some of the best most educational nursery rhymes, but I’ve chosen these ones specifically because I’ve found them to be the most useful over the years of teaching music to small children.
Music is a language, and since all children are born being unable to talk, it is an invaluable tool in building language skills and communication. Nursery rhymes are the poetry of childhood and through repetition and chanting, they are the perfect introduction to rhythm, pitch, and rhyme within the English language.
People have often asked me which are the best nursery rhymes for toddlers – and I find it very difficult to pick only ten songs when there are so many hundreds to choose from! Everyone has their own ideas on the subject, but these are the ones that never fail for me.
These songs all have fantastic educational benefits, they are loads of fun and kids never ever tire of them!
When songs are this popular you’ll find them easy to sing frequently. Try to incorporate them into your every day activities. Although it’s great to have a special time for music too, Â you’ll find that favourite songs and rhymes can make even the dullest chores seem fun, and then the jobs are done in no time at all!
The list below will take you to a separate post for each song, with all the individual words, music, chime bar clip, actions along with the educational benefits.
Best Nursery Rhymes For Toddlers
1. Humpty Dumpty
Everyone loves a Humpty Dumpty, and although the words don’t seem to make much sense at all, they all love dashing to pick him and ‘help’ to put him back together again.
2. Row Row Row The Boat
Row Row Row The Boat is one of the first songs that toddlers play rowing too and fro with a partner, so it builds social skills and confidence too.
3. Ring A Ring A Roses
Kids never seem to tire of singing Ring A Ring A Roses and dancing around, holding hands in a circle and then all falling down together at the end!
4. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
This is usually one of the first songs toddlers learn to sing. The simple repetitive melody has a small range and is easy to remember, and they’ll often hum and sing the melody mimicking the words well before they can talk. It’s always a firm favourite at bedtime when you can sing it while looking at the real stars!
5. The Wheels On The Bus
The Wheels On The Bus is great for getting everyone to join in with the actions. You can keep it simple and have a regular bus full of the usual sort of passengers, or if you’re feeling adventurous, you can mix it up and have a special bus full of animals from the jungle!
6. Incy Wincy Spider (Itsy-Bitsy)
Whether you call him Incy-Wincy or Itsy-Bitsy kids just love him! Toddlers will imitate the actions of the creepy crawly spider legs climbing up the spout well before they can talk. And once they are old enough to sing along, this is always a big favourite!
7. Old MacDonald
Kids always love making animal noises, so Old MacDonald is the perfect choice for everyone to try out their best animal impersonations. And of course all that repetition is fantastic for speech development too!
8. 5 Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed
All toddlers love to bounce! So 5 Little Monkeys always goes down well and of course it’s good for counting too. You just need to make sure you don’t sing it at bed time, or you’ll never get them to settle down!
 9. This Is The Way The Lady Rides
This is another favourite bouncing song, but this time it’s sung sitting on an adult’s knee as if riding a pony. It’s a great way to introduce the contrasting tempos of the three different ponies. First, the dainty trot of the ladies horse, then the smart sprightly trot of the gentleman and then the fast, bouncy gallop of the Farmer, who falls down into a ditch – which is of course the highlight!
10. 5 Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day
Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day is great for practicing numbers and introducing the concept of subtraction, counting down from 5 -1 as each little duck swims away. It’s also really cute to get the little ones to pretend to be ducklings waddling along wiggling their tail.
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Thank for this
A technical problem: the Old MacDonald section is occluded by the Incy Wincy Spider section (repeated).
Just a glitch that can be easily fixed. Cheers and you’re a great kids’ website! Troy
Thanks for pointing that out Troy, I’m glad you’re enjoying LPKM, and i just fixed the link. đ
I love the Itsy Bitsy Spider! It was my favorite nursery rhyme when I was little.I had a spider hand puppet when I was little that me and my sister would take turns crawling around and making up new verses and adventures for Itsy Bitsy to go on. I remember it was this cute, black spider puppet that we would crawl around, up each others arms and sometimes tickle each other as we sang the song. We had a best friend who would come over and he would sing nursery rhymes with us too. We would play hand puppets and reenact nursery rhymes with the puppets. I also remember one Halloween, me and my sister dressed up as spiders. The costumes were both all black, we both had black gloves and long black pants. We both had black T-shirts and 4 arms attached to the shirt. Our friend dressed up as a fly and we would sing itsy bitsy spider to him and tickle him. We got a lot of candy cause we would sing itsy bitsy spider when we went trick-r-treating. I still have photos of us pretending to be scary spiders and him pretending to be scared. And then some of us giving him what we called “spider hugs”. They are really cute. We had lots of fun times growing up, playing dress up and acting out nursery rhymes. Playing spider hide and seek, which we of course made up. I can still remember some of the verses we made up for the Itsy Bitsy Spider. We had so much fun with this song. Spider hide and seek was a game we made up where whoever was it was the spider, they had to wear black gloves, and everyone else were bugs. When the person who was the spider found someone, they would sing Itsy BItsy Spider and tickle them. It was so much fun.ï»ż
That’s wonderful Teresa! What creative little children you and your sister were! I loved reading all about your ‘Itsy Bitsy’ games! Thank you for sharing!
I remember when i was little and these would be sanged to me almost everyday. These are still the best!.
I agree David! The traditional tunes are always the best!
Hi I’m trying to find the Aristotle axolotl rhyme that they used to say on play school when my kids were little. We can’t remember all the words and I’d love to share it with them now as we actually have an axolotl now.
Sorry Cassie! I don’t know this rhyme at all, but it sounds great! Perhaps it’s on youtube?
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Hi, Yes that’s fine, I’m very happy for you to quote from Let’s Play Music as long as there is a credit and link back to my site, and thanks for asking! đ
This songs are good for little children!!i like this song”Jesus love the little children”
Its a wonderful Song and Kids will really going to enjoy it .Thanks for sharing. Always keep Posting such things.
Many of our favorites!! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!
Lots of great songs in there! Thanks for linking up to TGIF! Have a great week!
Beth
Learning through music is a great way to get preschoolers learning about their numbers,
letters, and colors without even knowing they are learning. We still break out
into these tunes sometimes while we are whistling to our work or on car trips.
Thank you for linking up this week to the Thoughtful Spot
Weekly Blog Hop! I do hope that you will visit my neck of the magical woods
every week and take a quick rest by the tree on the tree stump while you read
everyoneâs blog posts that they have so thoughtfully shared with all of us.
You’re very welcome Jill! Thanks for hosting and we will definitely be back!