Not having taught very young children, I was however impressed some years ago by a discussion that Northrop Frye had with some child educators. He said that the worst thing about the educational system was that children were not getting poetry before prose -- he believed that the history of the human race showed that people chanted and learned complicated pattern rhythms very early, and prose (although it looked simpler) was actually a very late, sophisticated, ironing out of the rhythms of speech. He was asked in a question period what he thought young children should learn. He said that he would build up the rhyming games and the fascination with words that all children have. He thought that children up until the age of 10 should learn huge blocks of poetry and magic lists of huge mesmerizing words -- he thought "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" was a perfect example of the way kids will memorize tongue twisters, and try and make sure they had them exactly right. I wonder if there are songs like that -- the one that comes to mind is "Great Big Gobs of Greasy, etc.", but I'll bet you have some other pattern folk song in your repertoire. Might make an interesting experiment. Look forward to more reports on her progress (gee, she already sounds better than me!!!!)
yours, Peter T.