The Importance To Teach Kids Local Nursery Rhymes – bababaa

‘Burung Kakak Tua’ and many other Southeast Asian nursery rhymes are tools that can be used in fun learning sessions to teach kids how to sing in Bahasa while developing a love for their heritage.

If you go on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or most other online portals, chances are high that you’ll easily head toward more Westernized children’s content instead of making the effort to look up a Malay folk song or Indonesian lullaby. This is simply because there are so many arrows pointing towards international content—shares from your friends, viral videos, and so on so forth.This is why it’s so important to remember that amidst the spread of content from foreign countries, it’s vital that our kids don’t get overwhelmed and end up losing sense of who they are and where they come from. 

Start Them Early 

By getting them to learn these tunes at an early age, we’re putting them on the right path to preserve a love for their heritage and culture, which in turn leads to more meaningful bonds and familial connections with others of the same. 

Additionally, these songs can be used as tools during kids’ activities to help babies and toddlers pick up Bahasa Malaysia or Indonesia through repetition. This works because kids and babies have been proven to be exceptionally keen on catchy and memorable tunes, especially those easy to sing along to. If you can manage to add a few songs in Bahasa to their fun learning repertoire, you can bet they’ll be able to pick up the language much easier as they enter primary school.

Ultimately when you weigh up all the benefits, there’s really a strong argument for getting kids to learn and familiarize themselves with local folk songs, nursery rhymes, and lullabies at an early age. 

Rasa Sayang Books 

Once you’ve considered the above, the next step is to act by finding ways to get your kids interested in these songs. You could start by browsing YouTube and picking out animated videos for your child to watch or look out for television shows that feature these songs, although it’s rarer to see anyone actually watching TV these days. 

But if you’d rather not have your kid spend too much time in front of a screen, you might want to consider a book such as our bestselling Rasa Sayang Sing-and-Record Fun Book, its pocket-sized twin, or the Tepuk Amai-Amai Sing-and-Record Fun Book, all of which are designed to teach kids how to sing classic Southeast Asian folk songs and bursary rhymes including the titular Rasa Sayang, Chan Mali Chan, Lenggang Kangkung, and Burung Kakak Tua.