Hand and finger rhymes are popular with kids. The rhymes promote phonemic awareness in children through rhyming words, alliterations, and hand gestures. Finger Family is one such rhyme that explains the relationships between family members using a simple yet effective technique.
You teach kids to count family members on their fingers by allotting each finger to one member. Sounds cool, right? So who came up with this nursery rhyme and how? Let’s find out the history and significance of the Finger Family in this post.
Why not create finger puppets to make learning more fun for the little ones? Try it out!
Written Lyrics
Daddy finger, daddy finger where are you?
Here I am. Here I am. How do you do?
Mommy finger, mommy finger where are you?
Here I am. Here I am. How do you do?
Brother finger, brother finger where are you?
Here I am. Here I am. How do you do?
Sister finger, sister finger where are you?
Here I am. Here I am. How do you do?
Baby finger, baby finger where are you?
Here I am. Here I am. How do you do?
Printable Lyrics
Save the printable PDF from this link to get the lyrics of Finger Family nursery rhyme.
Photo Lyrics
Click on the below image to download it on your device.
Video Links
Check this entertaining and informative video where each finger in the hand is also named as a part of the rhyme. Link:
This video has the original lyrics of the rhyme:
Origins and History
The origins of the Finger Family nursery rhyme are not known. There isn’t much information about who wrote it. However, a little research shows that the rhyme was posted on the internet on 25th May 2007. Leehosook uploaded a video calling it Finger Family, and the name stuck. It wasn’t long before more such videos were added to YouTube by different people.
Many initial Finger Family videos had copyrighted characters from Disney (like Frozen, Mickey Mouse, Toy Story, Marvel, etc.) Not all videos made sense, though.
Gradually, new animated videos were created exclusively to suit the Finger Family lyrics. Some even made changes to the lyrics by adding the names of each finger. For example, the daddy finger explained that he was the thumb finger, and so on.
The rhyme is written in couplets. Each couplet's second line is the same- ‘Here I am, here I am. How do you do?’ This refrain makes the rhyme easy to memorize and narrate. Parents sing this rhyme to little ones when changing diapers, giving them a bath, or during feed times. The rhyme keeps the little ones engaged and attentive.
FAQs
Definitely! You can change the lyrics to suit whoever is in your family. Just make sure there are five people so that kids can count all five fingers. You can include the grandparents and count all family members on both hands.
Well, yes. Some people didn’t like how the initial Finger Family videos messed up popular characters from several shows. The characters from different shows/ movies were mixed to create a family which confuses the kids. Imagine Elsa from Frozen having Agnes from Despicable Me as a family member! Sounds weird, right?
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