Fun Finger Plays For Toddlers

These Fun Finger Plays For Toddlers are an essential part of any preschool curriculum. Finger plays and reciting rhymes are invaluable for teaching so many things: new vocabulary, speech development, comprehension and co-ordination along with developing memory skills but most important of all they’re such fun, children just can’t seem to get enough of them.

The old favourites are always the best when it comes to nursery rhymes and baby songs. Singing is brilliant practice for speech development and reciting nursery rhymes and baby songs in particular, encourages the repetition of shaping vowels and consonants. But when you’re chanting these colourful old rhymes, you’re also building and developing the imagination.

The title links of the rhymes below take you to each of the relevant posts for all the lyrics and hand actions, and the videos are a good reference for the melodies.

Fun Finger Plays

Incy Wincy Spider / Itsy Bitsy

Hickory Dickory Dock

My little Spider

This one’s great for building up confidence if anyone is a bit scared of creepy crawlies.

This is my garden

Walky Round The Garden

Here Is The Beehive

This video shows how you can use hand shadows for the finger play. If you can arrange a bright lamp in front of a white wall, this should keep the kids busy for hours! It’s a fun thing to do at bedtime with a bedside lamp tilted to shine against the wall.

Wind Your Bobbin Up

Lots of practice here for practicing the articulation of sounds, vowels and consonants through lots of repetition and recognising and matching rhyming words – so good for building early literacy skills.

The Apple Tree