• About
  • NEW Digital Handwriting Workshop
    • How to Teach Handwriting to Kids VIDEO
    • Printable Handwriting Handouts
    • Handwriting Letter Progression
  • SHOP
  • Want online therapy services?

Kids Play Smarter

Maximizing your child's play with purposeful activities

  • Fine Motor Activities
  • Gross Motor Activities
  • Handwriting Help
  • Sensory Regulation
  • Therapist’s Tips
You are here: Home / Therapist's Tips / Make Time for a Child’s Rhyme

Make Time for a Child’s Rhyme

July 20, 2017 by Amy Smith

Generations ago, nursery rhymes were created to help young children develop their rhyming skills. Nursery rhymes have withstood the test of time because the ability to rhyme is an essential part of learning how to speak and read. Rhyming is an early predictor of reading readiness, story retelling, creative writing, auditory discrimination, and sentence writing, so its vital to make time for a child’s rhyme!

Find out the importance of rhyming for speech, reading, and writing. Plus, download the free printable for worksheet practice!

Benefits of Making Time for a Child’s Rhyme

  • Babies learn speech patterns, speech cadence, and auditory discrimination with rhymes.
  • Toddlers and preschool children can gain readiness skills by listening to sets of rhyming sentences. This is important for word prediction, story retelling, experimenting with new words that have rhyming endings, and comparing/contrasting concepts of words that “do” and “don’t” rhyme.
  • Kindergarten through second grade children can improve their ability to identify word families and word chunks. These are helpful for phonetic decoding, spelling, sight word recognition, and reading comprehension.
  • School aged children can improve their creative writing skills by developing their own rhyming sentences, stories, and songs.

Rhyming can help with creative writing, reading, spelling, and speech.

 

How to Make Time for a Child’s Rhyme In Your Busy Day

  • Incorporate rhyming bedtime songs with your child before naptime and bedtime. Many rhyming songs are soothing, predictable, and reinforce routines at these times of day.
  • Sing songs during mealtime with your child incorporating rhymes. Mealtime can be a great way to introduce rhyming with trying new foods.
  • Attend story time at your local library where they often sing or read rhyming songs. Not only will this be a good exposure to rhyme, but the social aspect of story times will improve your child’s social skills and awareness. Encouraging social development in kids is so important, and incorporating story time activities into their learning can make a huge difference.
  • Give your child a word and tell them to come up with rhyming words (even if they are non-sense words). Above all, this will reinforce bonding and relationship building in addition to improving creativity.

Baby clapping hands while rhyming and singing nursery songs

Get your Free Make Time for a Child’s Rhyme Printable (click link below)

Link for Free Rhyming Printable Make Time for a Child's Rhyme Free Printable worksheet to work on rhyming skills for children.

Download this free rhyming worksheet for rhyming practice with young children. If your child cannot read or write yet, simply ask them if they can identify the missing rhyming word.

Also take advantage of these free nursery rhymes and rhyming songs from YouTube that you can use with your child.

Thanks for reading Make Time for a Child’s Rhyme. Check out these additional articles for the use of rhyming: Benefits of Rhyming and Importance of Rhyming. Remember to tell us your favorite rhyme song in the comments below!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Therapist's Tips Tagged With: child development, learning activities, literacy games

Disclaimer

Kids Play Smarter is a blog about general ideas, theories, and concepts related to the field of occupational therapy and the growth and development of all children. The information presented on this blog is not intended to serve as or replace occupational therapy services for your child. The information on this blog is for entertainment, informational, and educational purposes only. This blog is not meant to replace formal professional consultation or evaluation from a qualified clinician. All children need to have the approval of a physician to participate in physical activities, including those described on this blog. In addition, children need to be supervised by a responsible adult at ALL times when completing activities that are illustrated and described on this blog. The author of this blog is NOT responsible or liable for any damage, injury, accident, illness, death, or adverse reaction due to participation in the activities described on the website.

Welcome to Kids Play Smarter

Amy Smith I am an occupational therapist with over 10 years of experience working with children. I created this website to offer parents, teachers, and therapists FREE ideas, strategies, and activities that they can do with their children to improve their fine and gross motor skills, handwriting, academic learning, and regulate their sensory system all while "playing" (just playing smarter)! Read More…

Top Posts

Joint Compressions for Calming
How to Keep Writing on the Lines
Calming "Cookie Dough"
Improve Word Spacing Issues

Copyright © 2023 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...