How to teach your child rhyming words

5 Ways to Teach Rhyming (+ Free Printable Downloads)

by Marie Rippel

Did you know that rhyming is one of the best predictors of how easily a child will learn to read? That’s because good rhymers are better equipped to notice that rhyming words often have shared letter sequences, such as –all in tall, ball, and small, which in turn gives them a considerable head start in learning to read.

What Is Rhyming?

That may seem like a silly question, but it can be difficult to explain the concept of rhyming to a child who just doesn’t “get it.” Here’s a simple definition. When two words sound the same at the end, like duck and truck, they rhyme.

Most children enjoy hearing and participating in rhyming activities, and when they are exposed to rhyming, they usually pick it up naturally. But if your child isn’t good at rhyming yet, don’t worry! There are many things you can do to help.

Does Your Child Know How to Rhyme?

Use this simple test to find out whether your child knows how to rhyme. If your child needs help in this critical area, read on to discover how to teach your child to recognize and produce rhyme.

Three Stages of Rhyming Ability

It’s helpful to know that children don’t just start off rhyming. In fact, they generally go through three stages. In the order of easiest to hardest, those stages are:

Hearing and recognizing rhyme are important skills your child must master before he can produce rhyme, so be sure to focus on these skills first. Modeling can be a great way to help your child hear rhyme.

Here’s an example of modeling: “Duck and truck rhyme! They both end with uck! Say it with me: uck-uck, duck, truck!”

But hearing rhyme is just the beginning. The activities below were designed to help you teach your child all three stages of rhyming!

5 Simple Ways to Teach Rhyming

Read rhyming picture books together.

There are hundreds of great rhyming books, and this Rhyming Picture Books Library List is a good place to start. As you read, occasionally point out words that rhyme. (“Oh, goat and boat rhyme! They sound the same at the end. Goat, boat.”)

Play “Get Out of the Wagon” with your child.

“Get Out of the Wagon” is a popular Stage 2 rhyming game. In this downloadable activity, three word cards—like rake, cake, and king—are placed in a wagon. The child determines which word doesn’t rhyme and tells it to “get out of the wagon.”

Share nursery rhymes with your child.

Nursery rhymes are conducive to reciting again and again. After your child knows the nursery rhymes, let him fill in the rhyming words to work on Stage 2. On this downloadable library list, you’ll find some wonderful nursery rhyme collections to enjoy together.

Play “What’s in My Bag?” with your child.

Once your child can successfully recognize rhymes, this activity will help him learn to produce rhymes (a Stage 3 skill). Just fill a bag with several common household items (here are some ideas) and you’re ready to play “What’s in My Bag?”

Play “Dinner Time” with the whole family.

For more advanced Stage 3 rhyming, download this fun “Dinner Time” game. But make sure to play “Dinner Time” with the whole family. It’s guaranteed to provide lots of giggles for kids and parents alike!

The Bottom Line on Teaching Rhyming to Your Child

• Rhyming is an important pre-reading skill that reaps dividends later on.
• The ability to rhyme occurs in three unique stages.
• Use books, games, and engaging activities to promote rhyming ability. We make it easy by including hands-on activities throughout our Pre-reading program, and we continue to reinforce rhyming throughout the All About Reading program.

It may not happen overnight, but with repeated exposure, your child will learn to rhyme. Most importantly, keep your rhyming practice fun and light—it shouldn’t feel like a “lesson” to a young child.

Is there a rhyming activity that your child enjoys? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

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Photo credit: Rachel Neumann

Teach Rhyming To Struggling Students – The 7 Step Plan – Early Impact Learning

Rhyming is a very hard concept, and a lot of children take a long time to understand it. In ten years of teaching young children, I have seen many children learn to read fluently, and still not be able to complete a rhyming string.

However, there are some steps you can put in place, to help children maximize their potential in this area at least.

Follow these in order, and you are much more likely to see success.

To teach rhyming to struggling students you should begin with simple chants, songs and books. Move on to games involving joining in. Then extend to games where they are starting to think of their own rhymes with support.

An important thing to remember is that rhyming is not the be-all-and-end-all. It is mainly one of many tools to help children begin to read.

So try not to get stressed! Teachers and parents around the world have issues with rhyming, and they always will, so you are definitely not alone.

But if you start as easy as you possibly can with rhyme, and follow the following steps in order, then your chances of success become much greater!

Success breeds success in rhyme! So begin with activities that they literally cannot get wrong, and expand from there. This is one of the key principles behind the 100+ ideas and activities that I demonstrate in my online course Phase 1 Phonics Toolbag.

Anyway, let’s dive into the seven step plan.

Step 1 – Know The Pitfalls

There are a few things that you want to avoid to help the process of teaching rhyme to go more smoothly, and be much quicker.

The thing to avoid at all costs is children guessing.

This happens when children are set a rhyming challenge that is too difficult for them, and so they just make up the answer. This is a key pitfall in other areas of phonics as well, particularly in blending (find out what blending is and how to teach it here).

Asking a child to complete a rhyming string is an example of this (hint – don’t start with this!). You might say, ‘What’s a rhyme of cat?’ Children will often say something like, ‘Dog’. Or ‘Whiskers’, or some other strange word association idea like that.

When children don’t know how to do something, a lot of them will guess. This is a bad place to be, and a tricky habit to get out of.

So start easy (as I’ll show you in Step 2 onwards).

The other major pitfall is to get stressed!

There is no point in either the adult or child becoming stressed about rhyming! This is really counter-productive. I understand it can be frustrating, as so many children are able to learn many other skills in early reading before rhyme. There is some research that points to the difficulty in learning rhyme for many children (Source).

But please relax! Many children will learn to read whole books independently before they can complete a rhyming string. So, please don’t worry too much.

Right – onwards to building a foundation…

Step 2 – Build A Foundation For Rhyme

Start as easy as you possibly can when teaching rhyme. It is important for children to have a foundation of repetitive songs and rhymes to build on later.

So, some essential things to try are:

Nursery Rhymes That Rhyme

These are songs like Twinkle Twinkle, Wind The Bobbin Up, and all that kind of thing. Check out some fantastic songs to play with a parachute here.

Rhyming Books

I particularly like ones where the rhymes repeat a lot. A good example is Hairy Maclary, or The Smartest Giant In Town.

The more children are able to repeat rhymes, the better they will internalize them.

These two things – rhymes and books – are certainly not rocket science, but are crucial in giving children a platform onto which they can later build.

Step 3 – Extend the Foundation With Chants

When children have a platform of rhymes and songs, the next stage that I have found really successful is fun rhyming chants.

One way to do this is to get the children to stand up, and put some pumping music on! Something without words is best so they don’t get confused.

Then start chanting rhyming words to the beat of the music!

For example, go ‘Dog, dog, dog, dog, frog, frog, frog, frog…’

hThe children will hopefully join in. I like to make up actions at the same time as you say each word, just to make it more multisensory and fun.

For example, for the word ‘dog’ you could do ‘dog’s ears’.

Chanting games like this have the advantage of children not needing to guess. As long as they join in, they can’t go wrong.

You can also try chants with:

1. Making spells
2. Jumping and chanting at the same time
3. Using silly voices

Step 4 – Play Games Involving Rhyming

Next step is to play fun games where rhyming is involved.

Again, it is good if these are games where they don’t need to think of their own rhyming words (that comes much later in the process).

A great example of a fun game involving rhyming words is the ‘Robber Game’.

Have three or four objects that all rhyme. For example, have a toy ‘cat’, ‘bat’, ‘hat’, and ‘rat’.

The children sit in a circle, and show them the objects.

Have a go at chanting them all together. I like to point at each in turn, and go ‘cat cat cat…’ etc!

Tell the children to try and remember where they all are.

Then cover them with a sheet.

Now it is a memory game. One child is the ‘robber’. All the other children will close their eyes, whilst the robber comes up and ‘robs’ one from under the sheet.

They hide it behind their backs.

Then the others open their eyes. Take the sheet off and try and guess what has been stolen.

Simple games like this take the stress out of rhyming, and just expose children to lots of rhyming as a side-product of the game.

Take a look at some other examples of games like this in my guide ‘The Ultimate 18 Rhyming Games For Children.’

Step 5 – Play Repetitive Games

Next step is to get the children thinking about rhyming pairs of words, and getting them to connect them independently.

A great game for this is ‘Cross The River’.

You need some kind of blue sheet (or something similar) for this. This is the pretend ‘river’.

Get the children to sit in a circle, and place the sheet in a long snake shape down the middle.

You’ll need three volunteers to stand on one side of the river.

Now you will need a bag of three rhyming pairs of objects. For example, you could have:

1. A toy ‘cat’ and a toy ‘bat’
2. A ‘log’ and a ‘dog’
3. A ‘tin’ and a ‘bin’

First, show the children what the rhyming pairs of objects are, and I would try chanting the rhyme together. E.g. ‘log dog log dog’ etc

Give out one of each of the pairs of objects to the children (e.g. give out a ‘cat’, ‘log’ and a ‘tin’).

Then sing the song. This goes to music of ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain’, and the words are:

You’ll be crossing the river when it rhymes!

You’ll be crossing the river when it rhymes!

You’ll be crossing the river, crossing the river!

Crossing the river when it rhymes!

Then take an object out of the bag, for example, the ‘bin’. Whoever thinks they are holding the object that rhymes with ‘bin’ is going to jump over the river (hopefully the ‘tin’ person).

Repeat this for other words.

Step 6 – Supported Rhyming Games

Next step after those sorts of games, is to play activities where the children are starting to think of their own rhyme.

One good game for this is the ‘magic rhyming stone.’ Stones can be used for all sorts of early learning (check out some fantastic ideas here).

Have some kind of stone that looks ‘magical’. I have painted a small pebble with magical swirls and stars!

Tell the children that this pebble will help everyone rhyme! When you hold it, you know how to rhyme.

Sit the children in a circle, and pick a word that has lots of rhymes, such as ‘cat.’

Tell the children that you are going to all pass the stone round, and it is their turn to hold it they are going to say a rhyme of the word ‘cat’.

The easy version is to give them lots of ideas before you start.

All try chanting some rhymes of cat together – ‘Cat cat bat bat hat hat mat mat rat rat…’ etc

Then pass the stone around. All they need to do is say one of the words that you have just said.

This stops it going random!

The harder version of the game, is to let them all just make up a rhyme, but I’d only try this when the children are good at rhyming.

Step 7 – Support Them Inventing Their Own Rhymes

Step 7 is the one to take on when children are good at rhyming, and now you are practising the skill.

Step 7 is all about finishing rhyming strings.

There are lots of classic games to practice this skill.

A good one is ‘I Spy’. You say something like, ‘I spy something that sounds like ‘frog.’’ (It was a ‘dog.’)

Another one is the puppet game. Get some sort of puppet that will make up rhymes, but leave one word out.

For example, Max the Monkey might say:

‘Rebbit says the frog!

Woof says the…’ (dog)

‘Crack goes the twig!

Oink says the…’ (pig)

Another game to try (which is about the trickiest of the lot), is just asking the children to complete a rhyming string.

So you might say, ‘What words rhyme with box?’

If they can do this, then your work here is done!

Looking For A Solution To All Your Early Phonics Issues?

I have run my Phase 1 Phonics course for the best part of 5 years now, and it has pretty much been my most popular workshop over this time. Although it used to be just a face-to-face course, there is now a popular online version as well.

This course will:

• Give you an inspirational toolbag of at least 100+ games and activities to inspire children in phase 1 phonics
• Give you a full understanding of how to implement early phonics in the most successful way
• Give you a toolbag of songs, chants, games, videos, and puppet activities that will last a lifetime
• Be ideal for teams wanting to create an outstanding culture of early phonics in their setting
• Help you optimize the performance of space, resources, time and staff

Like all our courses, the Phase 1 Phonics Toolbag is about 2 hours long, and is fully flexible – attendees watch the pre-recorded videos at a time that suits them.

Flexibility is the name of the game! You can watch the training on multiple devices, multiple locations, and at different times.

You also get access to the online customers phase 1 phonics mastermind group. This is a facebook group that helps you interact with me, and with other schools, preschools and nurseries on the same journey.

If you are looking to create an outstanding provision of early phonics then check out the Phase 1 Phonics Toolbag online course here.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, the important thing really is not to be stressed – either you or the children!

Rhyming is definitely not easy. It is quite an abstract concept that just takes some children a lot longer to get their heads around.

So relax, and follow these steps in order, and you will at least give yourself every chance of teaching rhyme to the vast majority of children.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, then you definitely don’t want to miss this article about the ultimate ten terrific alliteration games.

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