hey diddle diddle

We had a bit of a discussion about nursery rhymes on Wednesday morning.  What, I wondered, is a nursery rhyme.

‘Well, it’s like a poem,’ answered Tanisha.

Which is absolutely right of course.  Because another word for poem is rhyme.

‘We learn them at school,’ added Emily.  ‘And at home,’ she continued.

What about the ‘nursery’ part of the phrase.

Emily to the rescue again.  ‘Nursery is like school for babies,’ she told us.  ‘But we  can learn them too and we are five.’  And some of us are already six.

Between us we came up with a list of nursery rhymes that we know. 

Baa baa black sheep was one.  Mary had a little lamb another.  And apart from having having sheep as their main characters, those particular two also tell us a story.  Albeit quite a simple one.  Mary’s little lamb went with her to school one day and someone wanted to buy quite a lot of wool from a black sheep.

What about this one. 

Hey diddle diddle

The cat and the fiddle

The cow jumped over the moon.

The little dog laughed

To see such fun

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

It is a poem, or a rhyme.  And it tells a story.  An odd story, admittedly.  But it brings me nicely to our art lesson. 

Which began with a squeeze and a squirt of paint.

And continued with a swish…..and a swirl…..with a scraper.

   

Until we each had some sky.

Which we put to one side to dry.

Next of course we each needed a leaping cow.  A leaping cow with black splodges. 

   

For she was to be a leaping Friesian cow.

   

Next we snip, snip, snipped everso carefully…..

   

(but don’t worry too much, Béatrix is very good at surgery, especially at re-attaching heads and legs).

Finally…..

a moon…..

for our Friesian cow to jump over. 

One, two, three - whee!  And hey diddle diddle!