As you likely know, I am a huge proponent of waiting until children are developmentally ready to learn skills. It is not developmentally appropriate to teach most 3-year-olds to read. But it is developmentally appropriate to teach most 3-year-olds to rhyme. And rhyming is the very first phonological awareness skill that little ones should learn!
When a child is struggling to learn to read, it often means there is a gap in the foundation (or that the child is not developmentally ready to read yet).
So, whether you’re helping a struggling reader, or teaching a child to read for the very first time, it is important to start at the very beginning with phonological awareness.
This is exactly how I start my learn-to-read program, How Wee Read. By starting at the very beginning, I was able to ensure that any child will have success when being taught to read for the first time, and any struggling reader could go back to the beginning and relearn each step to catch whatever skill is lacking.
How Wee Read covers it all. From rhyming to reading in 70 sequential, simple, and beautiful lessons:
- Step One: Phonological Awareness (7 lessons)
- Step Two: Letters, Sounds, and Blending (12 lessons)
- Step Three: Special Rules (4 lessons)
- Step Four: Decodable Readers (47 lessons)
Today, I would like to share with you the very first activity in How Wee Read. This activity will help your little one practice the first phonological awareness skill—Rhyming!
For this activity, you’ll need some rhyming picture cards. These cards are included with How Wee Read (along with many more beautiful printables), but you can download a sample that includes the rhyming picture cards right here:
What is Phonological Awareness?
Before we get into the activity, let’s go over what exactly phonological awareness means.
Phonological awareness is auditory in nature; it is about learning to hear and differentiate between sounds.
Do two words sound the same?
Do they begin with the same sound?
What would happen if we left the first sound off of a word; how would it sound then?
Since these skills are auditory, we are only focusing on hearing the sounds. We are not yet having children read the words or understand what letters are attached to the sounds. We are only focused on children recognizing and reproducing sounds that are heard. Making the connection to the letters comes later.
There are seven phonological awareness skills:
- Rhyming
- Word Awareness
- Sound Identification
- Syllable Awareness
- Sound Segmenting
- Sound Blending
- Deleting Sounds
A strong foundation in each of these skills is necessary for a child to learn to read. In fact, phonological awareness is even more important for later reading success than knowing the letters of the alphabet!
Rhyming is a great phonological awareness skill to start with because it is lots of fun and very important. There is a strong correlation between a young child’s ability to rhyme and his later ability to read.
Why is rhyming so important? Rhyming words are often spelled with the same ending. So if a child can read the word cat, it is simple for that child to also read rhyming words like bat, hat, and rat. Rhyming also strengthens oral language abilities.
How Do You Teach Rhyming?
Singing songs and reading nursery rhymes are wonderful ways to introduce little ones to rhymes. With really young children, there’s no need to point out the rhymes—just enjoy the songs and stories and expose your child to lots of words and sounds.
Next, children can listen to rhymes and figure out if they do, in fact, rhyme. This is when you can explain to your child that rhyming words sound the same—or they end with the same sound. Give oodles of examples when beginning this step.
Perhaps you would say: “I am going to rhyme with cat: bat, hat, sat, mat. Now I will do it again, and you tell me if the last word rhymes: cat, bat, hat, sat, mat, alligator.”
Nice and simple at first to build up that understanding and confidence.
Finally, little ones can practice making up their own rhymes and their own rhyming activities!
Phonological Awareness Activity: Rhyming
Now let’s get into some rhyming! For this activity, you’ll need some rhyming picture cards (you can grab the free printable near the beginning of this post).
Lay one of the large picture cards on the ground in front of your child. Say the name of this picture out loud. You will notice the word printed on each card. This is just for you, as some of the pictures needed clarity on the word they were representing. Remember that all phonological awareness skills are only auditory.
Next, you are going to go through the small accompanying pictures one by one, laying each one down, saying the name of that picture, and asking your child if the word rhymes with the big picture. If they do, he can place the rhyming small card on the big picture card. If not, it can go into a discard pile.
If this is tricky, say the name of the big picture before each small picture. For example, you could say, “Cat – hat, do those rhyme?” or “Cat – log, do those rhyme?”
If this is still too tricky, play with just the rhyming words at first until your child understands how rhyming works.
Once your child is familiar with this game and beginning to understand rhymes, you can add in multiple big cards! You could have all six big cards laid out on the ground and sort each small picture to its correct rhyme.
You could also flip over all of the small cards and play a game of Rhyming Match Me. Turn over two cards at a time and say each word—if they rhyme, you get to keep the cards! If they don’t rhyme, flip them back over, and it’s the next person’s turn.
From Rhyming to Reading in 70 Simple Lessons
I hope you found this information helpful and your little one enjoys playing with the rhyming cards!
For absolutely everything you need to teach your child to read—from rhyming to reading—take a peek at How Wee Read right here:
https://shop.howweelearn.com/pages/how-wee-read
Thank you so much for reading (and rhyming!), my friend.
xo
Sarah
