Lullabies in early childhood education

Abstract

Adequate rest and sleep are essential for children's healthy development, and while sleep is both a need and a habit, falling asleep is not always so straightforward and easy procedure. The literature offers several strategies for making a child fall asleep, but the fact that lullabies have played an important role in different cultures over the centuries, is only peripherally evident. However, this particular genre of childhood poetry, which belongs to the group of lyrical play songs, is an "undeservedly neglected genre" not only in terms of methodological issues related to the education of children, but also in terms of ethnographic and literary studies, as Imre Katona has repeatedly pointed out.