Counting Nursery Rhymes for the Early Years

One girl marching down the street,
Stamp, stamp, go her feet.
Two girls marching with their drums,
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, tum-tum-tum.

Counting rhymes are an excellent tool for developing early number sense in young learners. Rhymes make learning numbers engaging and memorable, helping children to grasp counting sequences, recognise number patterns and build a strong foundation for future mathematical learning.

This resource features the counting nursery rhyme “Here Comes the Band”. The download features one portrait page containing the entire rhyme, along with three landscape pages that feature four lines of the rhyme at a time. It displays the complete rhyme in a child-friendly font, making it accessible for early readers to follow along. It also uses underlining to denote the rhyming pairs, e.g. street/feet, sticks/clicks.

Read on for some suggestions as to how you might use this counting rhyme in your early years classroom!

Use This Counting Rhyme Poster in Your Classroom

This poster of the counting rhyme “Here Comes the Band” can be used in multiple ways in your early years classroom. Here are a few suggestions from our teacher team:

• Lesson Warm-Up – Use the “Here Comes the Band” counting rhyme as a warm-up to your counting lessons. Read or sing the rhyme together as a class, encouraging students to count along with you. Point to each number as you say it, reinforcing the counting sequence visually and auditorily.
• Movement Activity – Use the poster to engage students in a kinesthetic counting activity. Have students march in place or use instruments to act out the rhyme, linking physical movement with number counting.
• Number Recognition – Choose one of the numbers from the rhyme. Have students find these numbers in the classroom, or have them go outside to find them in the playground or wider school environment.

Download and Print This Counting Rhyme Poster

Use the Download button to access the easy-print PDF.

Project the poster on your interactive whiteboard or print it for your classroom display board. If you intend to display the poster, we recommend enlarging it for enhanced readability.

More Counting Activities for Reception

Click here for more teacher-created, curriculum-aligned counting activities to use with your early years students:

teaching resource

I Can Count to 10! – Mini Book

Practise counting small objects up to 10 with this student counting mini book.

teaching resource

Numbers 1-10 Bug Matching Game

Help students learn to represent numbers 1-10 in picture, word and number form.

teaching resource

Jellyfish - Count to 10 Match-Up Activity

Use this fun teaching resource to help consolidate your students’ knowledge of counting to 10.