Nursery Rhymes and their origins
Here's a good site with many Nursery Rhymes on it. It will be handy now that we have a little boy in the house. It's a bit more fun than the others I've found because it explains the origins of the piece. I mentioned it to Laura last night and she asked me if I knew why most nursery rhymes were based on 'negative' things. I said I wasn't sure but I thought it was a way to scare kids so that they didn't do stuff that was bad for them, and the reason they rhyme and are about simple characters etc. is so the kids will remember them. She said, that's what she thought too. I guess it's true but it's sure interesting to read about the specific way a particular rhyme came to be.
All of todays media for kids is much more positive of course. I think it's good that it's so positive now. I take it as an indicator that life is easier now and there's more time to have kids hear things that are inspiring and wonderful, as opposed to training kids that life is very hard and bad stuff will happen to them if they aren't careful. Of course bad stuff can still happen.. but what the heck.
I look forward to reading some of these rhymes to David.
