This Hickory Dickory Dock printable helps bring the nursery rhyme to life! What a fun way to practice literacy and math concepts, as well as stimulate your students’ imaginations.
Related: Humpty Dumpty poem and sequencing cards
Included are the rhyme itself and printable sequencing cards to help kids practice re-telling the rhyme. Be sure to have a look at my list of over 50 free preschool printables if you enjoy this one.
Grab your own set of Hickory Dickory Dock printables at the end of this post. P.S. This is a small taste of a full Hickory Dickory Dock preschool lesson plan set! Read on to find out more.
Hickory Dickory Dock Printable
As I mentioned, this free printable set includes the Hickory Dickory Dock rhyme for you to print (and laminate if you wish), plus a set of sequencing cards.
Sequencing cards can be used with the whole class, in small groups, or individually. They typically are used for kids to re-tell the nursery rhyme in order, but of course you can use them any way you want to.
Related: Five Green and Speckled Frogs Printable
Prep the Hickory Dickory Dock Nursery Rhyme
As with all of my printables, feel free to print and use right away. But if you want them to last much longer, I highly recommend laminating everything. You never know when you’ll find another use for a printable that requires it to hold up to little hands, play dough, erasable markers, etc.
You can download the nursery rhyme and sequencing cards from the link down further in this post. Next, open the file on your computer. You’re going to need the most up-to-date version of Adobe Reader for this. You may run into printing issues if you try opening the file in a web preview or other programs. And printing issues are no fun!
Related: Printable Nursery Rhymes Journal
Print out as many copies as you want, and even if I plan on only using one copy, I tend to print out an extra to have handy. Cut the Humpty Dumpty sequencing cards with scissors or a paper trimmer.
I highly recommend running them both through a laminator. This will reduce wear and extend the life of your printed copies. Another option would be to place it inside a dry-erase pocket. Either option will help you hang onto your printables much longer.
How to Use the Poem and Sequencing Cards
Now it’s time to use the Hickory Dickory Dock printable with your students. Ask them if they’ve heard of this nursery rhyme before; some may not have, and some will know it by heart.
Use your one-page printable to read through the poem once, and encourage the kids who know it to join in. Read it through another few times so the kids who don’t know it can become more familiar with it.
Related: Pat-A-Cake Printable
Here is a strategy for teaching this (and all) nursery rhymes to your kids:
- First, you say the rhyme aloud, making sure the students know to only listen.
- Then, prompt the students to be your “echo.” You say a line and then point to the kids and have them repeat it.
- After a few times with the children as your “echo,” see if they can run through the poem altogether!
- As with anything, repetition is key. So be sure to run through the poem with the students frequently.
And that’s it! Once the kids have a basic understanding of how the poem goes, pull out the sequencing cards. Then you can place them in a pocket chart as the class recites Hickory Dickory Dock together.
Hickory Dickory Dock Extension Activities
Wondering what else you can do with the Hickory Dickory Dock printables? I’ll tell you! Besides teaching the kids the poem, you can use the sequencing cards in hand-on activities that will reinforce what they are learning, and prompt them to use different parts of their brains.
One idea is to use the sequencing cards as a team-building exercise for the kids. Have them work together in small groups to put the cards in order. This is a great way to promote peer interaction, turn-taking, and language skills.
Since one of the stars of this nursery rhyme is a clock, this is a perfect opportunity to talk about clocks and telling time. The cards show the clock striking one, so go a little bit into what the hands on the clock do, and show them that the clock is at one o’clock.
Use the Hickory Dickory Dock sequencing cards for dramatic play. Kids can act out the movements of the clock hands and the mouse, and you bet they’ll get a kick out of it!
Alternatively, they can use small mouse figures to reenact the rhyme, or even draw it out on paper. The possibilities are endless!
Hickory Dickory Dock Poem
Hickory Dickory Dock has remained a classic children’s nursery rhyme for over 270 years! As with other poems this old, you’ll find several variations in the wording, as the poem initially was passed on aurally, and with that comes changes in how people told it.
Some versions of Hickory Dickory Dock include 12 verses! We chose to stick with the first verse for this printable:
Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Hickory, dickory, dock.
Who Wrote Hickory Dickory Dock?
If you are curious about the origins of Hickory Dickory Dock, it was first printed in 1744 in a book called Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, and was spelled, “Hickere, Dickere Dock”. Later, it appeared in Mother Goose’s Melody (1765), but the exact creator of the poem isn’t known. source
What Does Hickory Dickory Dock Mean?
Have you ever had a kid ask you what part of a nursery rhyme meant and you had no idea? We love to teach our kids classic nursery rhymes, and many of them have been around for hundreds of years. So sometimes the outdated language can be confusing.
Most accounts of the meaning behind Hickory Dickory Dock agree that it was used as either a way to teach children counting or time-telling, and even a method to decide who got to go first during game play.
You’ll also see explanations like this one from Sporcle, mentioning that sheep farmers in northern England would count out their sheep using the words, Hevera, Devera, and Dick from the Cumbrian language. It’s entirely possible Hevera, Devera, Dick morphed into what we now know as Hickory Dickory Dock.
Hickory Dickory Dock Books and Videos
As you may imagine there are countless book and video resources out there for Hickory Dickory Dock. Here are a few I recommend, but let me know if you have any favorites I may have missed!
This Hickory Dickory Dock video pairs the rhyme with American Sign Language for the numbers and some other fun actions:
Another video option for adding movement to the rhyme:
Kids will love this silly animated version of Hickory Dickory Dock, with some surprise animals:
Here’s another cute animated version, with captions for practicing word recognition:
This lively video features guitar and singing, while a baby enjoys the song and some stuffed animal guests. Preschoolers will be captivated by all the action:
I couldn’t resist adding in some Hickory Dickory Dock book recommendations. Add some of these to the mix to give your kids a visual taste of the poem!
Preschool Hickory Dickory Dock Lesson Plans
Hickory Dickory Dock is such a fun, classic nursery rhyme! That’s why we created an entire lesson plan around it. The printable here is only a small portion of what you will find in the lesson plans, so click below to to get your own set of our completely done-for-you lesson plans.
The 180+ page lesson plan set comes with:
- Related book suggestions
- Weekly lesson plan grid (including an editable format in case you want to make changes)
- Detailed daily lesson plans with whole group, small group, and center activities
- Skills checklist
- Hickory Dickory Dock nursery rhyme pages (in color and b/w)
- Nursery rhyme readers (in color and b/w)
- Retelling pieces (in color and b/w)
- Sequencing cards (in color and b/w)
- Retelling wheel (in color and b/w)
- Pocket chart words
- Sentence sequencing strips
- Letter/Sight word hunts (with answer keys)
- Nursery rhyme card and retelling stick templates (in color and b/w)
- Clock numbers counting activity
- Counting to 12 clock sequencing activity (in color and b/w)
- “Guess Who Ran Up the Clock” circle time game
- Measuring time (in color and b/w)
- Mouse number line (in color and b/w)
- Mouse patterns
- Pet mouse survey and writing activity (in color and b/w)
- Rhyming sort (in color and b/w)
- Mouse path tracing strips (in color and b/w)
- Typical day sequencing (in color and b/w)
- Real photographs
Get Your Copy of the Hickory Dickory Dock Printable
This printable is available to members of Fun-A-Day’s (free!) email community. Just add your email in the form below to get the download links sent to your inbox. Make sure to save the printable to your computer, as the links may change in the future.
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