Where do we learn nursery rhymes?

I learned such rhymes from my mother. My mother would read to me every day when I was a toddler, I had a large illustrated Mother Goose that had been passed down in my family.

Using the term “teach it” is a bit different from the actual process. Most children learn such things through repetition, from having it read to them over and over.

By the time a child is in Kindergarten, if a parent has been involved in reading to them, they would have already been exposed to nursery rhymes. In situations where the child is not read to, Kindergarten would be the first exposure.

And really, most kids would be exposed to nursery rhymes in Nursery School/day care. And, in impoverished areas, they would hear them at Headstart.

I learned them from family, books, school, and TV.

From my mother and her mother.

Nursery school mainly in my case. Not that I wasn’t read to but I think that was more story picture books.

I learned them mostly from my grandmother:

https://www.fluther.com/236823/if-you-were-born-in-the-60s-or-70s-will-you/

Mostly from family reading, I don’t recall much of that in school.

Just about anywhere will do.

Nursery rhymes are a part of our culture that gets orally transmitted from one generation to the next. Yes there are books that contain them, but that is not how they are learnt.

We didn’t have day care nor kindergarten & it was well before Headstart back when I entered school. I was taught by my Mother & there were nursery rhyme & fairy tale books.
FYI…

Rock-a-bye baby,
On the treetop.
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all.

I was able to finally remember it. The line that gave me the most trouble was, When the bough breaks. Bough is not a word in the vocabulary of most toddlers, and is not one that I use often as an adult.

Bough is not a word in the vocabulary of most toddlers, demonstrates why reading to children from an early age is so important. A child can see the illustration of a tree branch breaking under a cradle and make the connection with the word.

A follow-up question. Who teaches young girls jump rope songs? I find it hard to believe they learn them from their mothers. Could it be that younger girls learn them from older girls?

Jump rope songs were taught to me by my mom and girls on the playground. My mom jumped rope when I was a little girl, she was in her late 20’s and early 30’s.

I learned “Miss Lucy” songs at camp and school, from other students and from my babysitters.

Oh wow Miss Lucy. Lol. Now that’s in my head.

My grandmother used to sing these songs to me, like “swim little fishy, swim if you can, swim swim swim all over the dam” and I had no idea where they came from. Then one day I was in the car listening to an obscure radio station out in the country somewhere, like Pennsylvania or somewhere, and they were playing songs from the 1930’s and that song came on. It was so cool to see where she got it from. Maybe the song was written years before that, I don’t know, but to hear someone singing it from the Big Band era was cool. She also used to sing the one that’s more popular, “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?”

@jca2 My dad used to sing “Swim little fishies” too. And the other song’s lyrics are spelled a bit differently:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?
Yes! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?

@zenvelo Yes, I know that’s how it’s pronounced in the song, but I think the actual words are the way they’re spelled out “mares eat oats” etc.

@jca2 I copied the lyrics from a lyrics website. That’s how it was spelled when published; the third verse is about the words in standard spelling.

@zenvelo Oh, ok thanks!