What Is the News of the Day? Lyrics
Two neighbours gossip over the fence, and the big news is that a balloon has flown all the way to the moon. It is a joke from a time when balloon flights were the most exciting thing anyone had heard of.
What Is the News of the Day?
What is the news of the day,
Good neighbour, I pray?
They say the balloon
Is gone up to the moon!
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/what-is-the-news-of-the-day/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Spoken rhyme
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
What Does What Is the News of the Day? Mean?
One neighbour asks the other for the latest news, politely adding "I pray", meaning please. The reply is wild gossip: the balloon has gone up to the moon. Of course it has not, and that is the joke about people who believe and repeat every rumor.
History and Origin
The first people flew in a hot-air balloon in Paris in 1783, and balloon flights caused a sensation across Europe for decades afterward. Rhymes and songs about balloons became popular, and this little one pokes fun at how quickly the stories grew. It is printed in National Rhymes of the Nursery.
Learning Activities
- News game: take turns telling "the news of the day", the sillier the better.
- Balloon to the moon: talk about the real Moon landing in 1969, nearly two hundred years after the first balloon flight.
- Make a balloon: decorate a paper hot-air balloon with a basket underneath.