Play School (Australian TV series)

Play School is an Australian Logie Hall of Fame-winning educational television show for children produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It is the longest-running children's show in Australia, and the second-longest-running children's show worldwide. An estimated 80% of pre-school children under six watch the programme at least once a week. It is screened four times each weekday on ABC2's ABC4 Kids, at 6.00 am, 9.30 am, 12.30 pm and 3.30 pm (from 7 July 2014) and twice daily each weekend at 9.30 am and 3.30 pm.

History

Play School began production on 18 July 1966 based on a British programme of the same name. The first episode began transmitting that day, as the programme went out live. It has been produced continuously from this time. It has also launched the careers of several Australian actors and television presenters. Diane Dorgan and Don Spencer are the only regular presenters to appear on both the British and Australian versions, although Lorraine Bayly appeared in September 1972 as a guest storyteller on BBC's Play School. It was admitted to the Logies Hall of Fame on its 40th anniversary in 2006, in recognition of the strong influence the show has had in at least three generations of Australian children. Play School was the third show to enter the Hall of Fame in its own right, after Four Corners (1992) and Neighbours (2005), it is also the first children's show inducted in the Logie Hall of Fame.

Hickory Dickory Dock

"Hickory Dickory Dock" or "Hickety Dickety Dock" is a popular English nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6489.

Lyrics

The most common modern version is:

Hickory, dickory, dock.
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Hickory, dickory, dock.

Other variants include "down the mouse ran" or "down the mouse run" or "and down he ran" in place of "the mouse ran down".

Origins and meaning

The earliest recorded version of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in London in about 1744, which uses the opening line: 'Hickere, Dickere Dock'. The next recorded version in Mother Goose's Melody (c. 1765), uses 'Dickery, Dickery Dock'.

The rhyme is thought by some commentators to have originated as a counting-out rhyme. Westmorland shepherds in the nineteenth century used the numbers Hevera (8), Devera (9) and Dick (10).

Hickory

Hickory (from Powhatan) is a type of tree, comprising the genus Carya (Ancient Greek: κάρυον "nut"). The genus includes 17–19 species of deciduous trees with pinnately compound leaves and large nuts. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (State of Assam), as many as 12 are native to the United States, four are found in Mexico, and two to four are from Canada. Hickory flowers are small, yellow-green catkins produced in spring. They are wind-pollinated and self-incompatible. The fruit is a globose or oval nut, 2–5 cm (0.79–1.97 in) long and 1.5–3 cm (0.59–1.18 in) diameter, enclosed in a four-valved husk, which splits open at maturity. The nut shell is thick and bony in most species, and thin in a few, notably C. illinoinensis; it is divided into two halves, which split apart when the seed germinates.

Beaked hickory (Annamocarya sinensis) is a species formerly classified as Carya sinensis, but now adjudged in the monotypic genus Annamocarya.

Species and classification

Dock

Dock may refer to:

In transportation

In science

In computing

Places

People

Nursery rhyme

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the late 18th /early 19th century. In North America the term Mother Goose Rhymes, introduced in the mid-18th century, is still often used.

History

Lullabies

The oldest children's songs of which we have records are lullabies, intended to help a child sleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture. The English term lullaby is thought to come from "lu, lu" or "la la" sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by by" or "bye bye", either another lulling sound, or a term for good night. Until the modern era lullabies were usually only recorded incidentally in written sources. The Roman nurses' lullaby, "Lalla, Lalla, Lalla, aut dormi, aut lacta", is recorded in a scholium on Persius and may be the oldest to survive.

Many medieval English verses associated with the birth of Jesus take the form of a lullaby, including "Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweting" and may be versions of contemporary lullabies. However, most of those used today date from the 17th century. For example, a well known lullaby such as "Rock-a-bye, baby on a tree top", cannot be found in records until the late-18th century when it was printed by John Newbery (c. 1765).