Am I the only one who remembers spending hours and hours chanting about Miss Mary Mack and her ilk while I tried to mimic increasingly complicated hand clapping patterns with another kid? I seem to remember that I wasn’t very good at this, but that a lot of kids were patient enough to play with me anyway. I haven’t seen anybody do this in a long time… is that because I don’t have a kid the right age, or because it’s not happening? Parents of 6-11 year olds, please clue me in here. Should we be wearing period costumes while we even discuss this activity?
Well, even if that’s so, apparently I’m not the only one who remembers them fondly, because there is an entire website dedicated to them. Funclapping.com has thoughtfully tagged each rhyme and provided a tag cloud, so you can click on the name and pull up anything tagged with that name. Personally, I never learned Lemonade Crunchy Ice, so I’ll be trying to master it by making my kids do it with me. Don’t worry, it’ll give them something to do when they’re the only kids with a mom too mean to buy them their own iPad.
I was never good at the hand clapping games — I guess because I am very disorganized and my attention span is very short. They are fun games though, I love to watch.