Boost Phonics learning with Rhyming activities

Why Phonics learning is Important

Phonetic awareness is one of the most important building blocks of literacy learning, and rhyming is a fun and easy way to introduce and practice rhyming skills. Research has shown that rhyming is a good predictor of later reading achievement (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008) as well as a host of other cognitive boosting benefits.

Rhyming focuses attention onto specific sounds within words—isolating the phonemes and syllables—and then comparing those to other words. Nursery rhymes and rhyming games are a fun and natural way to help children develop the skills to isolate and compare specific sounds within words. In addition, rhyming has been shown to help children learn repetition and rhythm, boost verbal skills, increase vocabulary, and even improve recall and memory. 

Three Stages of Rhyming

There are three basic stages of rhyming–exposure, recognition, and production. It can take a while for rhyming to click, so the more that you can expose and call attention to rhyming words the easier it will be for children to progress into the next stages of rhyme learning.  As their rhyming ability progresses, creating opportunities to flex this new found skill will boost phonetic abilities and prepare them to become proficient readers.

Books are an Easy Place to Start

There is a plethora of rhyming books to choose from! Pick a few that you feel will be age and interest reflective of your child and incorporate them into your daily reading routine.

As you read, point out the words that rhyme, “Cat and Hat rhyme, they sound the same at the end, let’s say them together, cAT, hAT.” Have your child point to the pictures of the rhyming words. This article has more suggestions on how to optimize reading with your child. This is all part of stage one, as the books and rhymes becomes more familiar, you can help your child work on stage 2 by letting them fill in and say the rhyming words on their own. Let it be a fun interactive part of reading.

Nursery Rhymes Provide Additional Benefits

Nursery Rhymes are great options for rhyming books, they tend to use a cadence and words that are less common in our modern language, which is great for expanding vocabularies and literacy exposure.  Nursery rhymes also can contain humor, emotions, and examples of social behavior that can be a great scaffold for children to gain these skills for themselves. As your child progresses through stages one and two, continue to point out and emphasize rhyming words.

Use Music for Rhyming Exposure and Practice  

Anywhere you can sing, you can work on rhyming skills. Singing is just rhyming set to music, and you can boost the phonetic value of singing by pointing out or emphasizing the rhyming words in a song. As rhyming awareness grows let them fill in and sing the rhyming words. Combining multiple senses in learning is always beneficial, so if there are hand actions or silly voices for the rhyming words all the better. 

Rhyming Practice can be Done Anywhere

Another game that helps a child advance through recognition (stage 2) into production (stage 3) is having them identify words that don’t rhyme within a set of rhyming words. Say three words, two of which rhyme, then ask them which one doesn’t work. As they get better at this game you can increase the number of words and use longer, multiple syllable words. 

As your child enters the third stage of rhyming production, you can create rhyming riffs on games like Name as Many as You Can and I Spy. Have one person name an item and let the other come up with as many rhyming words as they can, then switch. You can have speed rounds, timed rounds, anything to spark their interest. “I spy with my little eye, three things that rhyme with ___.” All the better if a child can outsmart the grown ups and find more items than you. 

Be creative and make up your own games that present fun challenges and can be done just about anywhere—car rides, waiting rooms, public transportation, prepping dinner, etc. 

Rhyming Board Games

For the kids that love playing board games, there are a number of options. Some of our favorites are Rhyming Bingo and Rhyming dominos. There are also fun Rhyming puzzles.