Hey Diddle Diddle

When my children were babies, I would sing nursery rhymes to them. Favorite ones were Humpty Dumpty, Hey Diddle Diddle, Jack and Jill, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Not only does it entertain them, but it helps to build their language and reading skills later on. Rhymes have many benefits:

  • It’s a great learning tool because it is fun. It is easy to learn and easy to remember.
  • It helps them be familiar with word families such as cat, mat, rat, fat or hit, fit, kit, bit.
  • Helps build their phonological awareness. Meaning they learn to distinguish the different sounds in words. This skill is important to their reading success.
  • Develops their ability to recognize language patterns and structure.
  • When learning to read, they can use their knowledge of rhymes to help them predict words they do not know.

Don’t assume your child is learning to rhyme in preschool/kindergarten. My bet is they will first be taught to recognize the alphabets and the sounds of the alphabets. Then they will learn to identify the initial/first sound of objects. For example, /a/ for apple, /b/ for ball etc…. With my children, I found when they had polished up their ability to recognize initial sound, they started to have problems with their rhyming skills. For example, I would ask “what rhymes with ball?” and they would say “bat.” Their concept of rhyming was confused with using a word with the same initial sound.

Anyway, just saying that rhyming is a great learning tool and even though your child is going to school, you should check to see if their rhyming abilities are being cultivated. Some of the things I’ve done with my kids to help them learn rhyme:

Our latest game is an expansion of the “what rhymes with…” game. We would pick two rhyming words and then create sentences. E.g. Fat and Hat
I ate so much I grew so fat
And then I couldn’t wear my hat

Doesn’t matter if it is ridiculous. Actually, children love ridiculous.

So, have a good time
Learning to rhyme
Make up good ones
While eating your buns :)