Myths

Fingerplays and Nursery Rhymes

Summary of the rhymes:

Five nursery rhymes or fingerplays are offered: “This One Saw the Hare”, “1,2,3, We’ll Go to the Woods”, “Christmas Rhyme”, “This Is Gribouille the Frog”, “There Were Five in the Nest”.

Good to know: a fingerplay is a rhyme that playfully combines a little song with a few gestures that are easy to remember and reproduce.

About the rhymes:

The five fingerplays offered make it possible to explore:

  • Collections of objects,
  • How to count in segments,
  • How to add one by one,
  • How to count down one by one.

👉 Discover the rhymes

Maths

Building the First Numbers up to 5

👦🏻 Target age: 4–6 years (middle and senior kindergarten, early first grade)

⏰ Estimated duration: 20 to 30 minutes

📎 Materials: Hands! Optionally 5 counters, 5 figurines or 5 small objects; a number strip; a small staircase drawn, built, or marked on the floor.

🎯 Educational objectives

  • Stabilize the oral number sequence.
  • Understand the difference between ordered collections (the number sequence) and others that are not (dad, mom, little brother, little sister, and the baby).
  • Build the first representations of quantities (1 to 5).
  • Experiment with +1 and –1 through gesture and voice.
  • Develop gesture–voice–quantity correspondence (I show 1, I say 1, I recognize 1 in another context).

🟢 Activity 1 – Unordered collections

Rhyme: “Here’s Daddy, Here’s Mommy…”

(or any rhyme where fingers are named without numerical order)

Specific objectives

  • Understand that a collection can be unordered.
  • Separate quantity (cardinal) from identity (dad / mom / brother…).
  • Introduce the idea that “5” remains “5” regardless of the order of enumeration.

Procedure

  1. The teacher names the fingers according to the rhyme.
  2. The child shows each character, but in any order.
  3. Ask: “How many people are in the family?”
  4. The child answers 5, even if the order of the fingers is not fixed.

🔢 Concept involved

→ Invariance of the cardinal despite permutation of the elements.

🟢 Activity 2 – The segmented rhyme

Rhyme: “1,2,3 We’ll Go to the Woods…”

Specific objectives

  • Stabilize the number sequence in groups (1–3, 4–6, 7–9, 10–12).
  • Understand that numbers form a continuous sequence (even if sung in segments).
  • Link with other cultural enumerations (alphabet, days of the week).

Procedure

  1. Sing the rhyme.
  2. Then reconstruct the complete number sequence on a paper strip.
  3. Ask children to verbalize: “What comes after 3? After 6? After 9?”

🔢 Concept involved

→ Stable order of the number sequence.

🟢 Activity 3 – The rhyme that adds 1

Rhyme: “This Is Gribouille the Frog Climbing the Stairs…”

Specific objectives

  • Build the concept of +1 (immediate successor).
  • Introduce the concept of order (1st step, 2nd step…).
  • Associate gesture, movement, and number.

Procedure

  1. Build a staircase (cubes, mats, drawing…).
  2. At each “hop”, Gribouille climbs one step.
  3. Say together the sequence: “1 step… 2 steps… 3 steps…”
  4. Have children verbalize: “When Gribouille moves up one step, we add 1.”

🔢 Concepts involved

→ Memorizing the number sequence – adding one unit.

🟢 Activity 4 – The counting-down rhyme

Rhyme: “There Were Five in the Nest…”

Specific objectives

  • Introduce the concept of –1 (immediate predecessor, taking away 1).
  • Build a first representation of counting down.

Procedure

  1. Show 5 fingers / 5 counters (5 baby birds).
  2. At each “and one fell from the nest”, fold one finger or remove one counter.
  3. Repeat together: “There are 4 left… 3… 2… 1”.
  4. At the end, bring back all the fingers / counters → concept of reversibility.