Play: Latest playground games go on record

The English Folkdance and Song Society (EFDSS) has won £154,500 for its new project, called Take 6, from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The grant will enable EFDSS to collect and archive folk song manuscripts in six national areas.

One of them is Redriff Primary School in Southwark, London, which hosted a Singing Games Festival in the 1960s.

Malcolm Taylor, library director at the EFDSS, said, 'Redriff Primary School also put out a singing games and playground rhymes LP in 1969, and we want to find the children who are on that record. We've found one so far, a teaching assistant at Redriff. We will start a reminiscence project in the New Year, asking them what it was like and what rhymes they can remember.'

The Southwark project will go on to investigate the singing games that today's pupils are enjoying in the playground.

Mr Taylor said, 'We will go into Redriff to work with the children and teachers in July 2008, leading towards a showcase event of performances in Southwark Park at the end of term, which hopefully other local schools will attend.'

Redriff school's head teacher Michael Kelly is eager to revive and record the playground games there. 'Rhymes and songs have a real role in helping children's language, teamwork, and also imagination,' he said.

'I think we have a responsibility to promote these old songs. We will ask the children to show their rhymes in assembly, and I really think it will give them a new impetus for rhyming.

'It's an absolutely fabulous way to engage young children. Learning rhymes and songs is one of the things that helps them learn to read - knowing a rhyme off by heart and then seeing it on the page, for instance. They are not called nursery rhymes for nothing.'

The EFDSS is inviting anyone who attended Redriff Primary School in the 1960s to get in contact with them by phoning 020 7485 2206.