Rhyming Activities for Learning to Read

As children begin to read, there is so much more than learning letters and sounds. Children need to develop phonemic awareness – or the awareness of the different parts of language (sentences, words, syllables, sounds). Phonemic awareness is a rather large skill that most children learn through playing with language. Therefore, I am going to split this important reading skill into a variety of different posts. We begin with the beginning stages that lead to learning rhyming.

Phonemic awareness actually begins with learning to recognize different words in a sentence and one sentence from another. Children then move into the single word level where they begin to work with rhymes. Rhyming is wonderful because it is often a prerequisite skill for learning to isolation sounds in a word. This isolation skill, leads to further development in blending and segmenting words.

Rhyming also begins work with the phonemic awareness skills of addition, deletion, and manipulation. Often times, a child first learns to rhyme by giving just the ending of a word or deleting the beginning sound. For example, cat rhymes with at. Some children begin by adding a letter to a word or adding a beginning sound. For instance, it rhymes with hit. Once children have both of these skills, they can begin to manipulate the sounds to create many different rhymes.

Learning to rhyme is a crucial beginning step that so many children pick up through play and reading books with their family.

Skills to Teach Before Beginning Rhyming

Before your child is ready to start rhyming words, they will need to play with language. Children begin by recognizing different words. Once they grasp counting different words, then you can move onto introducing syllables.

Play with Words

Before children are able to focus on words that rhyme, they need to distinguish a variety of different parts of language. Young children first need time to learn that sentences are made up of different words. Spend some time counting the words used in their sentences or even playing with sentences by adding one additional word. For example: “I love cookies” can change to “I don’t love cookies.” Simple changes can help little ones see that sentences are made up of words.

In the beginning, you may want to clap out the words in a sentence with your child. Start with 3 or 4 word sentences to keep the counting lower until your child is able to count higher numbers. As your little reader grows in counting words in short sentences, slowly try to lengthen the sentences to provide a challenge. Be sure to vary the sentence lengths so children hear a difference.

If your child isn’t quite ready to identify words in a sentence, try these Poke-a-Dot books. They are great for helping your little one count objects on a page. Developing one to one correspondence is a necessary skill before counting words in sentences.

Move to Syllables

Once your little one begins to recognize different words in sentences, they are ready to begin to look at syllables in words. We usually begin by focusing on syllables in people’s name or titles. Mom and dad are one syllable word, while brother, sister, and baby are two syllable words, and grandfather and grandmother have three syllables.

Names and titles are words that your young reader is familiar. This means that not only have they heard the word, but they are probably using the words in their own speech. This is important so that they can say each sound in the word when clapping out syllables.

Then we add in every day objects as we learn about syllables. I love the three, four, and five syllable words that we find around our house: cabinet, chandelier, dishwasher, microwave, television, macaroni, binoculars, watermelon, calculator, refrigerator. My kids loved to clap, stomp, jump, walk, and tap syllables in words. Tie one movement with each syllable spoken so that you child can easily count how many syllables are in the word.

If your little one is struggling with this, have them place their hand under their chin while they say a word. See how many times their chin moves their hand down. This activity lets them feel the syllables as they listen to them.

Teaching Rhyming

Now that your child has an understanding of words and syllables, they are ready to begin rhyming. Don’t worry if they can’t give a definition of a word or syllable; this comes later. It is more important that they can demonstrate their knowledge by counting words in sentences and clapping out syllables.

There are so many different activities to teach your child how to rhyme. These vary from listening to and identifying rhymes to creating their own rhymes. As with most new skills, we will start with identifying rhymes before asking your child to produce rhymes.

Begin with Rhyming Books

After syllables, comes the fun of rhyming. Most children are able to count words in sentences, count syllables in words, and hear and produce rhymes by the end of the first half of kindergarten. But for right now, we are going to focus on listening for rhyming words.

Begin by exploring books that rhyme. We have loved Dr. Suess books, Llama Llama books, Bear and Friends books, and There Was an Old Lady who books. Each of these books includes rhyming words on most pages. The rhyming words are pretty easy to spot because they are at the end of the sentences and even the page. There are so many other great stand alone books too! So many children’s picture books including rhyming words.

While reading, you can point out the words that rhyme or sound alike, pause and let your little one guess the next word, or even have your child tell you the different words that rhyme on the page. If your child isn’t ready to spot rhyming words, talk about them together. Then ask your child to repeat the words that rhyme. This helps your child begin to hear different rhymes and identify when words do and do not rhyme.

Rhyming Songs and Fingerplays

So much of our play when your little one was an infant or toddler was leading to learning to rhyme. Go back to the songs you sang with your child when they were younger and focus on the rhymes in those songs. Some great songs that have lots of rhymes include “5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and of course “Down by the Bay.”

Your little one will not only delight in listening to the music, but now they will love listening for the rhyming words too. When you sing the song, try to pause right before a rhyming word and see if your reader can fill in the word. Then be sure to point out the other words it rhymes with in the song.

Some of our favorite rhyming fingerplays include “5 Green and Speckled Frogs,” “Here is the Beehive,” “The Ants go Marching,” and “One, Two Buckle my Shoe.” Not only can you work on rhymes with your little reader, but you can get her up moving too. Kids love the actions that they can perform with the fingerplays.

Oral Rhyming Game

We also loved to play rhyming games in the car. When my little one was first learning about rhyme, we would use names to learn rhymes. We practiced listening to a name and another word to decide if they rhyme. For example: Jenny and dandelion, Jenny and penny or Jenny and zenny. It’s okay if you use “words” that are not really words and sometimes it is more fun.

Then we tried this same method with every day things like computer – zomputer, microwave – licrowave. It’s silly but gets your child to understand that rhyme is the end of the word. Once your child understands when two words rhyme, you can try giving them the silly word. Ask your child to think of a word that rhymes with the silly word. This is much easier than thinking of another word that rhymes.

Making Rhymes

Once your little one is pretty good at listening to rhymes, it’s time for them to start producing rhymes. We would start with a word (usually a name or every day object), and try to create as many different rhymes as we could. Older children even have fun with this too! They love playing with words and this is very good to help even your older children with spelling.

Once your young reader can create rhymes with every day objects, try some simple 3 and 4 letter words to find rhymes (cat, sit, sun, pet). The simple words are how teachers assess if your child can rhyme, so it’s always good to practice these. Plus rhyming these smaller words really helps with reading and writing them as well.

Adding a Challenge with Rhyming

Now, it’s time for a challenge – ask your child to find a silly word for each letter of the alphabet that rhymes or use blends (st, thr, sk, pl) or digraphs (th, sh, ch, wh) to make rhyming words. This will challenge your young reader to really think about different letter sounds. Plus you are working on manipulation of the phonemes in a word. These are great games to play as a family while waiting for things like check out in a store, waiting in line, or waiting for dinner to arrive at a restaurant.

Create Your Own Rhyming Books

We love to make books with our children. Rhyming books can be especially fun since your child will need to find words that rhyme for their book. If you are unsure of how to make one, we suggest starting with the song “Down by the Bay.” Let your child think of a rhyme to complete this book. Then you can either create the picture, take a photo, or draw a picture for their book. With this activity, you can make as many pages as you like and make them as silly as you wish.

Once you feel a little more confident making a rhyming book, let your child have fun with this activity. They can take pictures of items with rhyming words. Print these and allow your child to make up the sentences to go with the pictures. This can be a lot of fun and will help your child to express their own creativity.

Difficulties with Rhyming

While difficulty with rhyming doesn’t mean your child is dyslexic, there is a higher percentage of children with dyslexia who also struggled with rhyming in their early years. Sally Shaywitz points out the connection in her book Overcoming Dyslexia between children who have dyslexia and being unable to recognize rhyming words. Further, the Mayo Clinic notes that struggling to learn nursery rhymes and play rhyming games is one sign that a child may be at risk of developing dyslexia.

Of course, not all children who struggle with learning to rhyme will be diagnosed with dyslexia. However, if your child does struggle, this is something to keep an eye on. When your child begins school, be sure to speak with your child’s teacher about this difficulty. You will want to monitor your child’s reading progress and development for other signs of dyslexia. If your child does have dyslexia, the sooner they receive help, the better for your child.

Learning to hear and make rhymes is so important to moving on in your reading journey and helps with spelling too! Rhyming lets children begin to hear sounds in words and when paired with the letters, opens the door to reading so many different words. If your child can rhyme and read ‘cat’, then they can read hat, bat, sat, mat, that, splat. What a great way to get access to so many more words!

Don’t miss the next post in the learning to read series, Blending. Blending takes an in-depth look into how to help your child develop this phonemic awareness skill. If you enjoyed this post, drop of us comment below. We’d love to hear about your favorite rhyming activities. For more parenting tips, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter below.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.