Rhyming
Why is Rhyming so important?
1. Rhyming helps students develop phonemic awareness and decoding skills. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in a word. For example, separating the word "cat" to the individual sounds; "kuh, ah, tuh". An example of manipulating beginning sounds is going from cat --- bat --- sat --- hat.
2. Rhyming teaches students to group words together by sounds which reduces the number of words they have to learn. Rhyming allows students to make generalizations about the sounds that words are going to make instead of having to individually sound out or memorize every word they come across. Most teachers use "Word Families" to describe these groups of words. Enchanted Learning has compiled lists of the more common word families found in the English language, view those lists here.
3. Rhyming helps students with categorizing words and inventive spelling. When your child is beginning to write and learn the spelling of words, a generalization of word sounds gives them a starting point. For example, I may not know how to spell "clean" but if I knew how to spell "green"; I could guess "cleen". Eventually, we learn more spelling and sound patterns as our reading skills build and we are exposed to new words.
It is important to recognize that when rhyming with your child, the words do not have to make sense! It is more important that your child has the rhyming pattern down than that they are choosing "real" words."Bell, kell, mell, pell, zell..." is perfectly fine!
Fun ways to Enjoy Rhyming with Your Child?
-Read rhyming stories together. Help point out words that rhyme when you come across them. Ask your child which ending sound in the word is the rhyming part (goat, boat, moat--oat sound). When reading a rhyming book, I often let the children finish the sentence. "I meant what I said and, I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred___." (percent) They are really good at figuring it out!
-Which word does not belong? Give your child words and challenge them to figure out which word does not belong! To see if they are carefully listening to the sounds in a word; give them a "wrong" word that isn't obviously different. (cat, mat, jack instead of cat, mat, umbrella)
-Object rhyme. "Eye-Spy" or "Be A Detective" to find things around the house, in pictures, while driving, or in the grocery store, that all rhyme together. Who can find the most rhymes? Your child can even write down the list of words you find together. Or, you can find the objects and ask them to put the ones that rhyme together.
-Provide the rhyming word. You give a word and challenge your child to find one that rhymes. Or, they can give you a word and determine whether you gave them a word back that rhymes. Please keep in mind that the words do not have to be real words when your child is learning to rhyme.
My Favourite Rhyming Authors:
1. Rhyming helps students develop phonemic awareness and decoding skills. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in a word. For example, separating the word "cat" to the individual sounds; "kuh, ah, tuh". An example of manipulating beginning sounds is going from cat --- bat --- sat --- hat.
2. Rhyming teaches students to group words together by sounds which reduces the number of words they have to learn. Rhyming allows students to make generalizations about the sounds that words are going to make instead of having to individually sound out or memorize every word they come across. Most teachers use "Word Families" to describe these groups of words. Enchanted Learning has compiled lists of the more common word families found in the English language, view those lists here.
3. Rhyming helps students with categorizing words and inventive spelling. When your child is beginning to write and learn the spelling of words, a generalization of word sounds gives them a starting point. For example, I may not know how to spell "clean" but if I knew how to spell "green"; I could guess "cleen". Eventually, we learn more spelling and sound patterns as our reading skills build and we are exposed to new words.
It is important to recognize that when rhyming with your child, the words do not have to make sense! It is more important that your child has the rhyming pattern down than that they are choosing "real" words."Bell, kell, mell, pell, zell..." is perfectly fine!
Fun ways to Enjoy Rhyming with Your Child?
-Read rhyming stories together. Help point out words that rhyme when you come across them. Ask your child which ending sound in the word is the rhyming part (goat, boat, moat--oat sound). When reading a rhyming book, I often let the children finish the sentence. "I meant what I said and, I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred___." (percent) They are really good at figuring it out!
-Which word does not belong? Give your child words and challenge them to figure out which word does not belong! To see if they are carefully listening to the sounds in a word; give them a "wrong" word that isn't obviously different. (cat, mat, jack instead of cat, mat, umbrella)
-Object rhyme. "Eye-Spy" or "Be A Detective" to find things around the house, in pictures, while driving, or in the grocery store, that all rhyme together. Who can find the most rhymes? Your child can even write down the list of words you find together. Or, you can find the objects and ask them to put the ones that rhyme together.
-Provide the rhyming word. You give a word and challenge your child to find one that rhymes. Or, they can give you a word and determine whether you gave them a word back that rhymes. Please keep in mind that the words do not have to be real words when your child is learning to rhyme.
My Favourite Rhyming Authors: