It’s Raining, It’s Pouring with American Sign Language, ASL is not only a powerful way to learn but offers creative opportunities for parents and teachers to use to foster creativity in children. Here’s how:
Powerful Learning
Nursery Rhymes have been used for fun and learning with children for over 300 years. From the original Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes first published in the 1760’s. Since then we have used these original rhymes and added more to them over the years. Our newest YouTube video or the kid’s nursery rhyme called It’s Raining, It’s Pouring is thought to have been written in the early 1900’s. Since then, generations have been singing this song. Our video of It’s Raining, It’s Pouring demonstrates how the song is sung in conjunction with American Sign Language, ASL. It’s easy to do and our Instruction segment for It’s Raining, It’s Pouring will teach you the ASL signs you can use with children when singing this traditional nursery rhyme for kids.
Nursery rhymes have demonstrated over the years to not only be fun and playful but offer a way for children to learn language and develop their reading readiness for when they begin reading. A foundation in reading readiness allows children to become better readers and reading, as we all know, is the key to educational success.
Nursery Rhymes like “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” are a fun and simple way for children to learn about letter sounds, understand words, and enjoy the rhythm of language. They are often the first introduction children have to music and song.
By combining the music and movement nature of American Sign Language, ASL, with great kids nursery rhymes, like It’s Raining, It’s Pouring, children are learning language in a very powerful way. They are learning it verbally, visually, and physically – ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Memorizing what they learn in multiple different ways, storing that information in multiple different parts of their brain and strengthening the recall of words, sounds, and more through this combination.
Creativity
It’s Raining, It’s Pouring is a wonderful example of how traditional public domain music and melodies have been adapted over generations and how new songs have developed. It’s Raining, It’s Pouring is based on a much older melody to a rhyme called “A Tisket, A Tasket.”
I want to encourage you to think about using simple kids nursery rhyme melodies and create new and fun songs you can use with your children. So, you can do this simply with the help of a rhyming dictionary. Just play with words until you get a collection of rhyming words that work for you.
Here’s the song
It’s raining, it’s pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed
With a lump on his head
And couldn’t get up in the morning.
In this case you will need three words for lines 1, 2, and 5 that rhyme and 2 words for line 3 and 4 that will rhyme. Off the top of my head I came up with this idea
It’s snowing, its blowing
The white powder is flowing
In the trees,
Fiddle I eeze you can even make up a silly ditty
From my rhyming dictionary I came up with glow
Everything is glowing
Finally
It’s snowing, it’s blowing
The white powder is flowing
In the trees
Fiddle I eeze
Everything is glowing
It offers everyone, children and adults, an opportunity to become creative with simple songs and create words to old melodies just like “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” used an earlier melody to create a fun rhyming song. The words can even be silly
It’s funny what rhymes with funny sunny?
It’s funny, it’s sunny what is another uny sounding rhyme – bunny
What about the bunny, big, small, color
It’s a big brown bunny
Hopping here
Hopping there
Makes me laugh it’s funny.
You can help direct the children to think about rhyming words, short simple stories, silly word rhymes and much more by asking questions, looking up words in a rhyming dictionary, and just being playful.
It’s Raining, It’s Pouring ASL song and instruction is available on our We Sign Rhymes DVD. For this and other fun ASL products to use with children visit 4parentsandteachers.com