About NurseryRhymes.co

NurseryRhymes.co is a free library of traditional nursery rhymes for the adults who sing them: parents, grandparents, teachers, childminders and speech therapists.

Who writes this site

I'm Ben Carter, a father of two daughters. Before starting this site, I spent years producing a nursery rhyme channel for young children, and at home the same rhymes were part of every bedtime. The more I worked with these rhymes, the more questions I had about them: where they came from, what the old words mean, and which popular stories about them are actually true.

This site is where I put the answers, written the way I'd explain them to another parent.

Ben Carter is a pen name. I prefer to keep my family's life private, but everything written about me here is true.

NurseryRhymes.co comes from the same small team behind AllTongueTwisters.com, a collection of tongue twisters from around the world.

What you'll find on each page

Every rhyme page starts with the words, because that's usually what you came for. Below them you'll find simple hand motions, what the rhyme means, where it comes from, learning activities, and a clean printable copy of the lyrics.

Where the words come from

Our lyrics are taken from long-established public-domain collections, mainly The Real Mother Goose (1916), and each rhyme page names its source and the year the rhyme first appeared in print. Old rhymes often exist in several versions, so where the words we sing today differ from the oldest printed text, we show both.

We never publish lyrics from modern songs or children's TV channels, which are protected by copyright.

How we check the history

Nursery rhymes collect colorful stories, and many of them aren't true. We only state something as fact when it can be traced to a printed source, such as the book a rhyme first appeared in. When an origin is unknown, we say so. When a popular story, like the plague theory behind Ring Around the Rosie, doesn't hold up, we explain why.

Who this site is for

NurseryRhymes.co is written for adults who share rhymes with children. Kids are welcome to sing along with a grown-up, but the site isn't designed for children to use on their own.

Corrections and suggestions

Spotted a mistake? Know a different version from your own family or country? Want us to add a rhyme? Please write to us on our contact page. We read every message, and corrections are usually made within a few days.