Activity Page

Timing for Rhyming

I shared in my post “Why Rhyme?” that rhyming is a tier on the reading ladder because it gives children an awareness of sounds in words – words that sound the same versus words that sound different.
After you start working with them on distinguishing whether words rhyme or not (a listening activity), you will want to help your child listen to a string of rhymes and come up with a new rhyming word that would continue with the same ending sound.  For example, “What is a word that would rhyme with cat, mat, and hat?”  This is a great way for your little one to put into practice their rhyming skills.

But before we do that, I am including an activity that is going to introduce this concept without the “coming up with a new rhyming word” part.  Today, your little one is going to practice the first level skill by identifying which word in the group of rhyming words does not belong.  So your little one will determine if the which words rhymes with the other words (and which one doesn’t).  For example, “Cat, Mat, Sat, shoe?”  Which word doesn’t sound the same at the end of the word?  ________ (shoe)

I wanted to post another activity for rhyme identification so that you can help your little student master the skill before moving on to a more challenging rhyming activity.

Rhyming Match

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Clap it Out

In the last reading post “Chunks, syllables, and sounds…,” I talked a little about working with your kiddo on breaking down words into parts. This process helps your child start to segment words and one of your goals with your future reader is to have them segment a word into sounds.
So, for now they will “play” with words by breaking a word into syllables like jess-i-ca but later on they will be able to break it down into sounds like /j//e//ss//i//ca/.
Don’t get ahead of yourselves though; they have to master all the pre-reading skills first because there is a sequence of segmenting sounds that I will teach over time.
On that note, we are going to start with listening for syllables in words by clapping along with a word’s “parts” and your child will count on their finger each time you clap. Then you will write that word. You can even extend the activity by asking him/her which word is the longest, shortest, the same number of parts, etc.
Clapping syllables

The answers are: backpack (2), computer (3), book (1), watercolor (4), chalkboard (2)

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Why Rhyme?

Little Miss Muffet would be glad to know that her legend lives on. We all grew up reading, singing, and memorizing a variety of nursery rhymes, but would you know that children are still expected to know nursery rhymes? Yep…it is a GLE (Grade Level Expectation) for pre-k and k kiddos. There are a few reasons behind this seemingly dated benchmark. 1) Children are expected to be able to recognize familiar songs and rhymes for extended learning in classrooms, 2) Children are expected to utilize their memory, 3) Hearing and making up rhymes is a reading indicator!
I understand if you tuned me out for the first two reasons but did you hear what I said? Yes, rhyming is a tier on the reading ladder. If a child can hear and make up rhymes then that means that they can manipulate sounds in words, and manipulating sounds is a big chunk of what reading consists of in early readers. Rhyming is a definite pre-reading activity. 🙂
So, go crazy around your house speaking in rhyme: “Are you ready Freddy?” “See you later gator!” “After a while, crocodile” “That’s easy cheesy!”
Explain to your child that rhymes sound the same at the end of the word. So you can say two rhyming words in a sing-song way and it sounds almost the same, but if you say two non-rhyming words in a sing-song way then it just sounds awkward.
So, check out some mother goose books from the library and read some nursery rhymes to your kids and, of course, here is a hands-on activity.

Open the Rhyming activity attachment.  Print it, see if your child can identify all the pictures (name them), and ask your child to color all the words that rhyme with “sat” red (-at word family) and then color all the other pictures whatever other color they would like.

rhyming activity -heart

Note: The first rhyming activity you do should focus on seeing if they can hear a rhyme or not.  So, if you take out this sheet and say the names of everything on the paper, dont just ask them to find the rhyming words.  Ask “Does cat rhyme with sat?”  Then, “What about bear? Does bear rhyme with cat?” Say them right next to eat other and wait for a “yes” or “no” from your child. For example, “Cat, sat?” “Bear, Sat?”  Give guidance for the activity.  If your child says “yes” to cat, say “Good listening! Color it red because cat rhymes with sat!”  If your child isn’t getting any right, put the activity sheet away and work on just making up silly rhymes and give this a lot of practice before continuing or moving on.

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