May 1 is Mother Goose Day.
My favorite nursery rhyme is one that Organizer Daughter altered when she was little:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and taco shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

The Mary in the rhyme was either Mary, Queen of Scots or Bloody Mary (Elizabeth I’s half-sister) or Mary Magdalene. And the silver bells and cockle shells are either decorations on a dress or instruments of torture. The pretty maids? Mary’s ladies in waiting or the guillotine. Take your pick. Admit it. Don’t you like our version better than the original? Taco shells are so harmless and good to eat, and they have no hidden symbolic meaning as far as I know.

For more information on how to celebrate Mother Goose Day, go to the Mother Goose Society website.
For recipes, crafts and coloring pages, try mother goose.com, or go to this Nursery Rhyme page for more educational links. Also, DLTK has coloring pages and craft ideas.

Mother Goose-based games: Mother Goose Caboose.
The Mother Goose Pages: Nursery Rhymes.

My favorite nursery rhyme/Mother Goose books:

In a Pumpkin Shell illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund.

Lavender’s Blue: A Book of Nursery Rhymes compiled by Kathleen Lines.

Mother Goose: If Wishes Were Horses and Other Rhymes illustrated by Susan Jeffers.

Mother Goose illustrated by Brian Wildsmith.

Old Mother Hubbard by Alice and Martin Provensen.

The Real Mother Goose by Blanche Fisher Wright.

The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose: A Treasury of More Than 300 Classic Nursery Rhymes collected and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.

The fair maid who, the first of May
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree
Will ever after handsome be.
– Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme

What’s your favorite Mother Goose rhyme or book?