Kindergarten
A Closer Look at Mother Goose
Special | 19m 50sVideo has Closed Captions
Learn about Mother Goose with rhymes, books, tongue twisters — and meet a live goose!
Educator Ruth Mork welcomes children into the world of Mother Goose. She shares rhymes, taunts, games and tongue twisters from classic books — highlighting how no two versions of the nursury rhyme are the same. With curiosity and warmth, Ruth encourages children to imagine who Mother Goose was — and what she might have looked like.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Kindergarten is a local public television program presented by PBS Wisconsin
'Kindergarten' is one of PBS Wisconsin's — known then as WHA-TV — earliest educational children's television programs of the 1950s. Originally recorded on 16mm film — part of WHA's 'School...
Kindergarten
A Closer Look at Mother Goose
Special | 19m 50sVideo has Closed Captions
Educator Ruth Mork welcomes children into the world of Mother Goose. She shares rhymes, taunts, games and tongue twisters from classic books — highlighting how no two versions of the nursury rhyme are the same. With curiosity and warmth, Ruth encourages children to imagine who Mother Goose was — and what she might have looked like.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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[ Music ] That's a lovely lot of bias, isn't it?
What else do you think is part of Mother Goose?
Let's turn the page.
[ Music ] This is a taunt.
You listen to it.
Cross-patch, draw the latch, sit by the fire and spin.
Take a cup and drink it up and call your neighbor in.
And taunts are another part of Mother Goose.
A taunt that you might be more familiar with is Georgie Porgy, Wooden and Pie kissed the girls and made them cry.
That's a taunt too.
And it's another part of Mother Goose.
Well, I wonder what this is.
I think I know.
Do you?
[ Music ] I think it's a game.
Should we sing it?
[ Music ] I like that game, don't you?
So the games are one more part of Mother Goose.
Do you want me to turn another page and see what else we can find?
[ Music ] I bet you cannot do this.
I bet you can't.
Do you know what this is?
This is a tongue twister.
You listen to it.
How much wood would a wood chuck chuck of a wood chuck good chuck wood?
He would chuck as much wood as a wood chuck of a wood chuck good chuck wood.
Can you say that as fast as I did?
It's difficult.
It's called a tongue twister.
Will you try it with me?
All right.
Here we go.
How much wood would a wood chuck chuck of a wood chuck good chuck wood?
He would chuck as much wood as a wood chuck and chuck of a wood chuck good chuck wood.
Did you do it?
Good.
All right.
And that was our last page in our immense book of Mother Goose.
So let's close it up.
[ Music ] Did you think that Mother Goose contained all of these things?
Now probably you haven't seen a book like this but there are many many other books of Mother Goose that you'd like to read.
I wonder if you have any of these in your classroom or at your home.
This is Margaret D'Angeles book of nursery and Mother Goose Rides.
And this contains many of those that we just saw in the immense Mother Goose.
Jack and Jill, Mary Hippet, Little Lamb, many of those.
And here's another one.
Our old nursery rides.
And this one is made up of this is a song book.
And we know we found out that songs are a part of Mother Goose didn't we?
[ Music ] This is a lovely Mother Goose book which is illustrated by Elle Leslie Brook.
And it's called Ringer Roses.
And they have lovely illustrations.
This little book is an old old book illustrated by Kate Greenway.
And many of the verses are not exactly the way you know them.
They're changed just a little bit.
Here's one, an interesting one.
The Pogo Step Mother Goose.
Did you know they had such a thing?
Remember we found out that stories are a part of Mother Goose?
And this is the house that Jack built.
This is a lovely one in a pumpkin shell which is illustrated by Joan England.
You perhaps have read some other books by Joan England.
This is a Mother Goose book I know that you'd like.
This is Mother Goose for Rital Rhymes.
And much of it is done in picture writing.
So it's easier for you to read.
And here we have Tongue Tangler.
Just like how much wood wood it would chuck chuck.
We call them Tongue Twisters, but it's the same thing.
Remember that we said that children, people all over the world like Mother Goose?
Here's nursery friends from France.
And here's a Mother Goose.
What is this one?
ABC.
We said this was part of Mother Goose didn't we?
And here are stories written by Perot, who is the first person to put Mother Goose stories into book form for children.
And here are some little books that you can buy for a penny.
Mother Goose wins.
And here's one I think that you children are familiar with.
The tall book of Mother Goose.
Now with all of these many Mother Goose books and there are many many more that we don't have here, I wonder, do you imagine that everyone who has illustrated drawn pictures in these books imagines that the Mother Goose characters look exactly alike?
Do you think Humpty Dumpty, for example, looks the same in every single one of these books?
I wonder, do you think Humpty Dumpty looks like this?
Or do you imagine that Humpty Dumpty looks more like that?
Do you like this picture of Humpty Dumpty better?
That how you think he looks?
Or do you imagine Humpty Dumpty looking like that?
Well now we have found out something happened we, that not everyone pictures Humpty Dumpty or the other Mother Goose characters is looking the same way.
You know, I think you might like to all color or paint a picture of Humpty Dumpty, the way you think he looks, as you imagine him.
I wonder how many different of ideas that Humpty Dumpty you'll get from your group.
All right, we found that out that the illustrations are different happened to him.
And what else if we found out?
We have found out that Mother Goose contains many many things.
There are many categories in Mother Goose aren't they?
Can you mean some of them quickly?
There were tongue twisters and riddles and songs and lullabies and stories?
There were many categories where there many more than probably were even in our immense Mother Goose book.
And then we found out something else about Mother Goose.
What was it?
We found out that no one knows exactly who the real Mother Goose was and no one knows exactly what the real Mother Goose looks like.
So what you'll have to do is just decide which one of these versions, which one of these ideas you want to believe and then you believe that one.
Just as I'm going to have to decide which one of the versions I want to believe and that's the one I'll believe because even adults like Mother Goose.
Now, we've learned a great deal about Mother Goose.
We've talked a lot about Mother Goose today.
And there's one more thing I want you to think about.
I wonder, do you think that there's a Father Goose?
And if you do, do you think he's a little bit like Mother Goose?
Goodbye, Mother Goose.
[Music] Kindergarten is designed after the Supervision of Professor David C. Davis, University of Wisconsin School of Education.
Your teacher has been Ruth Mark, a production by WHA Television for the Wisconsin School of the Air.
[Music]
- Home and How To
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Kindergarten is a local public television program presented by PBS Wisconsin
'Kindergarten' is one of PBS Wisconsin's — known then as WHA-TV — earliest educational children's television programs of the 1950s. Originally recorded on 16mm film — part of WHA's 'School...