Family on your Hand

Family on your Hand

The family finger rhyme is a song that has become popular children over the last few years. You might have seen your child watching one of the many YouTube videos that feature the rhyme. The rhyme is catchy and easy for little children to learn because of this it makes a great teaching tool.

The Origins of The Rhyme

The finger family rhyme is a mother goose rhyme with unknown origin. It grew popular after Leehoosock published the first video of this rhyme on YouTube on May 25, 2007. After the release of the video, many other videos of this kind began showing up. It has a tune that is similar to “Where is Thumbkin?” which took its tune from “Fere Jacques.” Rhymes that name fingers originated in the Middle Ages. There was a Rhyme named Lick Pot which named the fingers thumb, lick-pot, long man, leche-man, and short man.

Hand Motions

There are two different hand motions associated with the song. In one version you wiggle the finger the song is mentioning. When you sing about the daddy finger, you wriggle your thumb. When you sing about the mother finger, you wiggle your pointer finger. When you sing about the brother finger, you wiggle your middle finger. When you sing about the sister finger, you wiggle your ring finger, and when you sing about baby finger wiggle your pinky. Another version has you wave your hand and then point to the finger the song is talking about when it says ” Here I Am.”

Using the Rhyme in the Classroom

This rhyme teaches babies all the way up to kindergarten. Fingerplays help with fine motor coördination and focus.The child has to manipulate their fingers to match what their teacher is doing. The rhyme makes a good vocabulary lesson teaching the parts of the family. It could also help young children learn the differences in their fingers. The thumb is short, and the middle finger is long. The rhyme can easily be changed to go along with any vocabulary. One art lesson from the rhyme is tracing the child’s hand and help draw the family faces on the fingers.

Variations of the Song

Some of the more popular versions consist of teaching the family names in a different language. There are versions where they use popular children’s characters to name the fingers. In the color version, the fingers are labeled as colors. There are also versions those name animals, like the bunny version that goes momma bunny, baby bunny.

Interesting facts.

There are over a million versions of this song on Youtube. The song grew quickly in popularity after the Muffin songs channel and the Videogyan channel did their versions in 2011 and 2013. There are also a number of family finger apps the most popular being The Finger Family Song app available for iOS.