What's your earliest memory of a rhyme?

Think back to when you were little.  Can you recall a nursery rhyme from this time in your life?  Where where you?  Who was it that sang it to you or with you?

We know that songs and rhymes are really important for language development and listening skills.  Rhymes usually have lots of repetition and rhyming words.  But....lots of songs and rhymes we know today is only because of family members that have handed them down to us by singing them to us when we were younger.  Then we pass them onto our children and the link goes on. 

Not all families have extended families to pass rhymes down through generations.  It's really interesting looking at songs and rhymes today which ones we still sing and which ones are relatively new.  For example when I was little I remember vividly 'Ride a cock horse to Banbury cross, to see an old lady upon her white horse, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes'. 

I don't hear this rhyme as much now that I am older, however I do hear rhymes such as 'Wind the Bobbin up' and 'Wheels on the bus', two rhymes which didn't exist when I was younger.  It makes you think doesn't it?

Here are some other rhymes I don't hear as much today, do you sing them with your children?

• Boys and girls come out to play
• Bye, baby bunting
• Diddle diddle dumpling
• Ding dong bell
• Handy Pandy
• Higgledy, Piggledy, my black hen
• Little Boy Blue
• Little Jack Horner
• Little Polly Flinders
• Little Tommy Tucker
• Lucy Locket
• Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater
• Sally go round the sun