Did you know May 1st is National Mother Goose Day #NationalMotherGooseDay. You would think as long as Charlie has been Homeschooled that we would have studied Mother Goose Day and Nursery Rhymes but as many books as we’ve read we haven’t so now we have something new to study. If you’ve had your students study Mother Goose and have any information on what I should add to our lesson plans please leave me the information as a comment below.
For most of us Mother Goose reminds of our childhood and celebrating Mother Goose Day on May 1st allows us to share memories from our childhood with our children. Humpty Dumpty’s clumsy fall and the Three Little Pigs’ scramble for houses to Pinnochio’s nose, fairy tales and nursery rhymes entertained us as kids whilst providing us with important life lessons.
Charles Perrault, a French author, is thought to have been the first writer to establish fairy tales as a separate genre in 1695. Fast-forward a little further into the future, the Grimm fairy tales, which were published during the 19th Century, have now become quite famous worldwide. Thanks to Disney, the Grimm fairy tales have become more child-friendly but, originally, they were gruesome in their details. For example, in the original version of “Snow White,” her stepmother died after being cursed to dance in glass heels forever. I didn’t know that did you?
Gloria. T. Delamar, a prominent fairy-tale writer, founded Mother Goose Day in 1987. This was the same year when Delamar published “Mother Goose: From Nursery to Literature.” But the history of fairy-tales and subsequent nursery rhymes go quite further back in history. The French writer from the 17th Century, Charles Perrault, is believed to have been the founder of the fairy-tale genre. It was through his works that fantasy and life lessons were incorporated for the first time. In 1729, an English version of Perrault’s work, translated by Robert Samber, was published and it was called “Histories, or, Tales of Past Times, Told by Mother Goose.”
Many of the original versions of fairy tales and nursery rhymes had much darker themes than the ones that we have today. In the Little Mermaid story, instead of Ariel’s happy ending, she returns to the Sea and dies after turning into Sea foam. Another example is the nursery rhyme, ‘Ring a Ring o Roses’, which refers to the Bubonic plague. In the old days, fairy tales and nursery rhymes, much like poetry, would parody the political situations of a Country. Sometimes, the satire would be taken with so much offense that the writer was put to death!
Many famous authors of the modern age, like C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, credit fairy tales and nursery rhymes with influencing their thinking and work. It is also because of these writers and their predecessors that many people get into reading in the first place, and this was the aim of Delamar and all the other nursery rhyme writers who wanted to encourage children to read. Studies show that reading fiction from a very young age creates empathy and these people tend to be leaders with great qualities and skills. Empathy, in itself, is an important quality in all walks of life.
MOTHER GOOSE DAY ACTIVITIES
- Take a trip down memory lane by bringing out those old fairy tales and nursery rhymes from your childhood.
- Celebrate the Mother Goose Day with your kids by reading with them.
- I don’t know about you, but some people would have liked to have had a bite of Hot Cross Buns being sold for one a penny or two for a penny.
FACTS ABOUT THE GRIMM BROTHERS
- The Grimm brothers intended for their fairy tales to be read by adults instead of children, and this is also why the original fairy tales were much more gruesome than the ‘clean and safe’ versions today.
- The Grimm brothers were not the actual writers of the stories but were only collectors of them whose sole purpose it was to preserve the German oral traditions’ stories that had been passed down for generations.
- The Grimm brothers’ stories were a blockbuster hit, so much so, that these books are believed to have out-sold Shakespeare and the Bible.
- Edgar Taylor translated and published the Grimm brothers’ stories in England in 1823.
- The Grimm fairy tales are some of the most-published books in the world with multiple versions.
WHY PEOPLE LOVE MOTHER GOOSE DAY
- Childhood nostalgia beckons with a promise of dragon rides and amazing adventures. Through fairy tales and nursery rhymes including Mother Goose, we’ve made memories and bonds to last us a lifetime.
- Stories have the power to take us on journeys without moving from our seats and they do not require us to fill out extensive visa documents or have disposable funds for traveling. All it requires is imagination and off you go on a great adventure.
- Teaching life lessons and their importance to kids is extremely important and doing so through a medium like fairy tales and nursery rhymes makes it all the more fun.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
