Hey Diddle Diddle is a nonsense rhyme that first appeared in print in London in Mother Goose’s Melody in 1765.
It’s filled with silliness, from the image of a cat playing a fiddle, or violin, to the cow jumping over the moon – if you’re “over the moon” then you are very happy about something – to the dish running away with the spoon (which makes you wonder what happened to the fork and the knife).
Play “What if …?” with your little one to encourage language development and build vocabulary. What if the dog played the fiddle? What if the cat jumped over the moon? What if the fork ran away with the spoon? And where were they going?
Act out the rhyme together. Let your child assign the parts. Or use stuffed animals and change the lyrics to the rhyme yet again. “Hey diddle diddle, the teddy bear and the fiddle, the monkey jumped over the moon!”
Notice the rhyming words and talk about them. Play with sounds and find new rhymes for these words, like “the cat in the middle,” or “the cow jumped over the star – and the dish and the spoon drove a car!”
Most of all, have fun together! Piaget said that “Play is the work of childhood” – it’s amazing what they will learn when you are having fun together.
The latest Nursery Rhymes Virtual Storytime is below, but first, here is a coloring page to print out that features Hey Diddle Diddle:
