by
Candace A. Dietz
Children love rhythm and
song. Rhyming poetry is music to children and they are drawn in by it. When my
children were small, I would read to them daily. I would read Mother Goose, Dr.
Seuss, Shel Silverstein and other fun books written in rhyme. These were their
favorites. I would read the poems with inflection and feeling and then, after a
few times, I would leave out the ending words and the kids would fill in the
the right word. A five-year-old can often fill in a left-out word on the first
reading if he is used to rhyme.
At quiet time, when my
children were looking through their books, I would hear them reciting parts of
the rhymes from memory, employing the same inflection that I used with my
reading. After a while they memorized some of the poems and then started to
notice the words at the ends of lines and their spelling. Usually, a
five-year-old can do this.
You can help your child
learn to read by emphasizing the rhyming ending words in poems. I will use my
book, A Bee Named Bea and Other Poems,
to illustrate this method. After simply enjoying the poems, next you can point
out the rhyming words and have your child repeat them. In “A Chicken Named
Charlie” they will find the words Charlie, Harley, Marley; careless, scareless;
bars, mars, stars; away, hay, Clay, day, play. After having your child repeat
the words enjoying the sounds, you can list the rhyming words of individual
poems and make flash cards. Put them in envelopes for the individual poems.
Have them repeat after you. Emphasize the sound of the first consonants. This
should be a fun game for five- and six-year-olds. See if your child can
recognize these words when they don’t go in order in the poem.
Your child will notice
that some of the words in “A Cow Named Sue” look a lot alike: moo, foo, too.
Some rhyming words in the same poem sound alike, but they don’t match the way
they are spelled: Sue, you, new, do. In “A Chameleon Named William,” there are
some of the same words as in “A Cow Named Sue:” do, new, too, you, plus two new
words with the same sound: blue and hue. “A Butterfly Named Arin,” has three
new “oo” sounding words: flew, loop-di-loo, and true.
After playing with the
matching/rhyming words in individual poems, over a period of time the words can
be scrambled. Then the child can line up the matching sounding words on the
floor or stack the cards on the table. Then she can recite the words for you,
practice writing the words, and make her own story using some of the words. You
can help with the writing part. This method can be used with any rhyming book.
Above all, reading should
be enjoyable. If this is not a fun activity or if your child is not ready, pull
back. Just read and read and read to your child. Include poetry in the mix and
have fun together.
Copyright © 2014 by Candace
A. Dietz. If you wish to reprint or re-post this article, please include byline
and author’s bio (top right of this blog).
