Monday 28 November 2011

Nursery rhyme videos - why we make them!

The first nursery rhyme from Little Baby Bum was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We chose this traditional children's song, as our first animation, due to the reason that there seemed to be no hints towards a dark origin, or sinister meanings behind the lyrics, making it as free of controversy as possible! However, it has to be said that, a lot of nursery rhymes, which are aimed primarily at preschool kids, do have more sinister undertones and histories. See this Rhymes website for more background information. Some of the very detailed information contained here is incredible! Whilst it's a fact that not everyone agrees on each rhyme's origins or meanings, which are indeed very much up for debate still, the speculation, reasoning and stories make for a great read.

To bring us more up to date with present day thinking: one thing that can be stated as a fact is that nursery rhymes are hugely beneficial learning aids for your child. According to the Wikipedia article on nursery rhymes: and specifically regarding the importance of nursery rhymes on young children's development:

“It has been argued that nursery rhymes set to music aid in a child's development. Research also supports the assertion that music and rhyme increase a child's ability in spatial reasoning, which leads to greater success in school in the subjects of mathematics and science” - indeed these quoted facts are backed up by third party/independent research.

Of course the main reason to show your children these wonderful and highly colourful songs and traditional poems is because they're such great fun! It's also great that there are videos of nursery rhymes on YouTube which offer parents a zero-cost way to access all their old favourites such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Incy Wincy (or Itsy Bitsy) Spider, Hickory Dickory Dock and so on. Access to lots of free nursery rhymes is a brilliant way for parents to pass on their favourite songs from their own childhood to their baby and young children thereby keeping the old traditional songs alive. Having these songs made into videos propels them into the 21st century and keeps them very relevant. Let's not forget that it's so much fun for the adults to remember and choose all their favourite nursery rhymes for their own children and babies!

In a Guardian newspaper article from a few years ago, Booktrust asked 2500 people to vote for their favourite nursery rhyme and they then compiled a top 10. Do you agree or disagree? How about your children? Do they agree with this list?

At Little Baby Bum we pretty much agree with their top 10, although not necessarily the running order, and will be animating most of them.

Top 10 nursery rhyme songs:

1. Hickory Dickory Dock

2. Little Miss Muffet

3. Round and round the garden

4. Incy Wincy Spider (Itsy Bitsy in US)

5. Baa Baa Black Sheep

6. Jack and Jill

7. The grand old Duke of York

8. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

9. Humpty Dumpty

10. If you're happy and you know it (clap your hands)

Our first video, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, is soon to be followed up by Baa Baa Black Sheep and Incy Wincy Spider, which all feature in the top 10 nursery rhymes. If you have any requests and your favourite nursery rhymes are not included in this list then please do let us know

Sunday 27 November 2011

Nursery Rhymes for Preschool

New Facebook page launched today called Nursery Rhymes for Preschool

This is a supporting page to the main and is designed to be more general.

Nursery rhyme videos

This article was written about my Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video:

For many many years parents have been using nursery rhymes to entertain their babies and even toddlers. We also use them to soothe them when we try to get them to sleep. One of the most popular of all of the nursery rhymes has to be Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I remember singing the following one to all three of my children when they were little.

I recently found a medium that was not around when my children were little and I decided to check out what YouTube had for the purpose of animated versions of the timeless classic nursery rhymes. I went out to YouTube the other day in search for the purpose of the best one I could find.

I found several animated videos of the timeless classic nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and I watched them as well as listened to music accompanying the video and even found the one that as a parent I think would be the best one. I am English speaking and even it was important that I find English version of the video. I came across the one that fit my needs along with I really liked the fact that it was sung in a traditional British English language.

As far as the animation portion of the video I was really impressed with the visual content. I liked the use of star dust to represent the twinkling of the stars. The addition of the planets was a great touch. The closing of the video with the Star Family also added greatly to the experience. I especially liked that it was not a cartoonish animation, it genuinely added to the feel of the video as well as song.

I have heard that they will be preparing more videos of other nursery rhymes along with I definitely look forward to see them. These additional videos should be available some time next year.

To see the video for the purpose of yourself click the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star link

If you are looking for a more modern take on a timeless classic nursery rhyme, you really need to check this specific video out as well as subscribe to their channel as well as see what they have next.

Taken from: http://www.articlefree4all.com/Art/120565/130/Twinkle-Twinkle-Little-Star-45-nursery-rhyme-video-from-Little-Baby-Bum.html

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Littlebabybum.com has Google PR5!

Another "wow"! My homepage Little Baby Bum has a Google pagerank of 5! I'm really happy about this as it means Google rates it very well indeed :)

Monday 7 November 2011

100,000 views of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video!

Wow! My Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video just hit 100,000 views! it's taken just over 2 months to achieve and is *way* ahead of when I thought this would be possible with this little old nursery rhyme! *BIG GRIN* Thanks to everyone who have watched it. I've received some lovely messages from parents who've said that their little ones have loved the video. Such a good feeling!