When looking at nursery rhymes to promote counting, especially with early years children, there were many that came to mind. I remember singing songs such as “Ten in the Bed” and “5 Little Speckled Frogs” when I was young, however, when researching one for this module, I found the rhyme above particularly useful.

Firstly, as in many of these rhymes, the songs use the number name sequence going from “5 little snowmen…” down to “1 little snowman”. This gets the children practicing the numeral names and can learn about counting backwards, as in school we tend to focus on counting forwards.

Secondly, the song counts the snowmen on the screen. This reinforces the numeral names and their sequence from 1 to 5. It also has the children counting forwards, which means they can practice both in this rhyme.

The third thing I particularly like about this rhyme is that they include a noise for every missing snowman. For example, when you get down to 2 snowmen, there are 3 “shh” noises after it. This leads the children into addition and counting on, as they are learning that there are 2 snowmen there and 3 missing to make the total of 5.

I think this rhyme is particularly good to be used in the early years classroom to promote counting, and could easily be extended beyond 5 when the children improve in their maths ability. The subject could be changed depending on season or even topic, making it a highly versatile resource.