Lockdown Day 35 – Rhyming
Literacy
Do you remember singing nursery rhymes and playing action rhymes like ‘Humpty Dumpty’, ‘Jack and Jill’? These rhymes and rhyming games were commonplace in days gone by. Sadly, somewhere along the ‘modern’ way, these seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Recent research into the development and acquisition of early literacy skills has conclusively shown that rhythm and rhyme play a hugely important role in the development of literacy.
* RHYMING FOR EARLY LITERACY DEVELOPMENT *
Before we move on to today’s games, please familiarise yourselves with the just some of the benefits of singing and re-telling familiar rhymes and rhyming stories with children.
AUDITORY DISCRIMINATION: Rhyming teaches children how language works. It helps them notice and work with the sounds within words by identifying words that do or do not rhyme.
PRONUNCIATION: Rhymes give children the opportunity to learn to pronounce words by repeating them over and over again.
RICH LANGUAGE AND VOCABULARY: There are many words and turns of phrase used in rhymes that are not necessarily part of day-to-day language.
PHONEMIC AWARENESS: Rhymes allow the brain to start to differentiate between syllables, and to identify similarities between words that rhyme, or begin with the same sounds. Words that share common sounds often share common letters. This is an important foundation for later writing and spelling.
PATTERNING: Rhymes are patterns of sound that teach the brain to categorise words by their internal structure. This is also a foundation for reading and writing where children need to identify the sounds of written words.
MEMORY AND PREDICTION SKILLS: Learning to anticipate the missing word and being able to complete a rhyming sentence by predicting the missing word is an important pre-literacy skill.
CREATIVITY: Listening to rhyming songs and poems allow children to create a mental picture of the scene, thereby expanding the imagination. Making up nonsense rhyming words further supports creative thought.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: The words used in nursery rhymes help children develop language comprehension by associating words with people, objects, and events in their daily life.
*****
RHYMING GAMES
* Break out all the ‘old’ NURSERY RHYMES and have fun sharing your favourite nursery rhymes with your children!
* Play ‘RHYMING FAMILIES’. Choose a ‘sound family’ (ow) and give the child a clue to answer that rhymes with the sound. For example: What animal gives us milk? (Cow). What is the name of the female pig? (Sow).
* Play ‘WORD RHYMES’. Ask questions like: what is a colour that rhymes with glue? What is an animal that rhymes log?
* Play ‘FILL IN THE RHYMING WORD’. For example: My big black CAT caught a big fat ….!
* Make a RHYMING CHAIN. Name a word and take turns naming a word that rhymes. When you run out of words or an incorrect word is given, the chain is broken. Start a new chain. For example: cat, bat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, tat, vat…
* Find a RHYMING OBJECT. Give the child a word and ask her/him to find a matching object in the room. Example: Find an object that rhymes with hair (chair).
* RHYMING GREETINGS. All children love a bit of fun – try some of these, or come up with your own: See you later, alligator; in a while, crocodile; out the door, dinosaur; bye-bye, butterfly; take care, panda bear; give a hug, ladybug; got to go, buffalo!!
*****