Boogie Mites working with the National Literacy Trust

Boogie Mites have provided songs for the latest campaign by the National Literacy Trust.


The NLT's 'Talk to your Baby' Campaign aims to promote talking and singing with your baby in order to support emotional confidence as well as language skills.


As part of it's campaign, the NLT is encouraging all parent of under fives to hold a 'Talk to your Baby' party using some of Boogie Mites' modern arrangements of traditional nursery rhymes.

To hold your own party with Boogie Mites songs, go to the 'Talk to your Baby' website:

http://www.talktoyourbaby.org.uk/partypack4

Guiness World Record Attempt

Boogie Mites partnered with children's communication charity 'I Can' to break the world record for the number of people singing Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes at the same time. 40,000 groups from around the country participated in the attempt! It will be six weeks before we know if we have succeeded. In the meantime, many thanks to Boogie Mites' own indomitable roving music leader Hilary Palmer for leading the effort in Nottingham today.

Boogie Mites Lecture at Portsmouth University

Boogie Mites are providing a lecture for the Childhood Studies Course, on using music to support learning in the EYFS.


Sue Newman will be giving the lecture to students on the Childhood and Youth Studies course on Tuesday 8th March. The session will cover the use of music to support learning in the EYFS with a particular focus on developing communication skills. Five songs from the Boogie Mites Music Programme to support Letters and Sounds Phase 1 will be considered in detail and in small groups students will plan a one hour play activity around one song for the pre-school/year R age group.


Please contact Boogie Mites if your organisation would be interested in a similar seminar.

Nikki Ludlam Children's Centre Support Teacher: How Boogie Mites supports Language skills

Boogie Mites

Many early years practitioners have been concerned to read recently of a survey that suggested that of 1,200 parents, 40% could not recite a nursery rhyme all the way through.

Taken from EYE Magazine, Volume 9, No. 7

For some time, research has indicated that children are entering the Foundation Stage with significantly lower communication, language and literacy skills. Following the Rose Report came the development of the ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme by the Primary National Strategies Team. This programme reinforced the importance of ‘getting it right’ for children during their early years, so that when they start school they already have an excellent ability to really tune into the sounds that they hear around them.

To achieve this we have to be immersing children in language and sound, allowing them to explore, experiment and truly understand how sounds fit together to become words. We need to make it fun!

One way some settings have found to achieve this is by using the Boogie Mites programme and resources.

Boogie Mites can be used alongside Phase 1 of the Letters and Sounds manual and is intended to support the role of music and physical play in laying the foundations for good language and literacy skills. The children and adults alike enjoy the songs, games and rhymes, and I have even heard the ‘Tidy Up’ song at the Tesco check out.

The Boogie Mites resources suggested can all be home-made from materials that could easily be collected by parents and practitioners. Children love to work with instruments that they have made themselves. Each song is linked to one of the seven aspects of Letters and Sounds that it supports and tips and suggestions for activities that complement it are offered.

In essence, Boogie Mites is about enhancing learning through music and having fun and it can be done anywhere.

Resources can be cheap and just needed a little thought to turn them into an exciting activity which will, no doubt, be returned to by all the children again and again.

Doesn’t it just make you want to go and join in the fun?

Nikki Ludlam
Children's Centre Support Teacher