Rhymes & Songs
The ones you half-remember — and the words, so you can finish them.
Knee bounces, finger games, counting songs, the daft ones for the car and the slow ones for bedtime. They cost nothing, need no kit, and fit in the small gaps a proper activity is too big for. Most parents know the first line of thirty of these and the whole of about four — so the words are here.
How to use this
You don't need to sing well. A child does not notice and does not care — yours is the voice they would choose over any recording. Pick one, do it two or three times so they can join in, and stop before they want you to.
These are not filler. Rhyme and rhythm train a child's ear to hear the separate sounds inside words, and that hearing is what reading is later built on — long before any letter is taught. The actions add the body, the counting songs add number, and the old ones hand over a bit of where they come from. Every rhyme here says what it's actually doing.