On 29th of October all my classmates and me were discovering and practising some finger plays and Jazz chants.

On one hand, Raquel, our teacher, began asking us for some finger plays. Everybody looked at each other because we didn’t know exactly what was she talking about, so she finally explained us that finger plays were the plays our partners used to play with us by taking hands as a game. They could be just a play or also could be a play mixed with a song.

Then, we realized about what Raquel was dealing to, so we were telling her some examples that we all reminded of our childhood. These were “5 lobitos”, “Un elefante se balanceaba”, “Este fue a por leña”, etc. After that, Raquel was introducing us some examples from the English children literature: “This little piggy went to the market”, “Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear”, “Two little dicky birds”, “One, two, three, four, five”, “Incy Wincy Spider” and “Five little ducks”. This kind of literature is very fun and useful.

In future, when we were teaching english literature to our students we can introduce them these examples in order to make them aware of the wealthy variety of infant literature not only here in Spain but in England and in other countries as well. We can use them as an original  tool in class or, if anybody ends up teaching on Infant Education that person may be able to use them with the youngest children.

On the second hand, Raquel introduced us another kind of children literature in English. These one were Jazz chants.

At the beginning, Raquel played a video in which Carolyn Graham explained us how she created Jazz Chants. She said that Jazz Chants are composed by a coherent set of syllables together by following a simple rhythm.

If we want to create a Jazz Chant we only need to follow some basic rules: To use real and useful language and to be conscious that this one is appropriated to the age of the children we want to apply it. So, how can we use Jazz Chants to 4 years old children?

If we want to focus on 4 years old children we can use any content they were studying at school and create a rhythm for it. One of the examples Carolyn showed us was to use sentences such as “Have a nice weekend!” and “thanks, you too!” We can use these ones in order to show our pupils respect behaviours in our society. Using just two beats this specific Jazz Chant would sound like this:

• Haveanice weekend! (2 beats)
• Thanks, youtoo! (2 beats)

Moreover, Raquel gave us the opportunity to make up one Jazz Chant per group, so we could put in Carolyn Graham’s shoes and try this at least once. Because of that, we noticed that it’s very important the creativity, the objective why you are doing that and having fun with your pupils. If you want you can accompany the Jazz Chant with a specific choreography. It even would be more catchy for children.

In my opinion, I think both resources are useful and appropriate for children. Maybe it seems that finger plays are more appropriate for the youngest children than Jazz Chants but using creativity we can adapt them to everybody.