Why is rhyming important ? Songs that teach rhyming

Rhyming is an important component of phonemic awareness. Children love rhyming and enjoy making silly verses with words that sound the same at the end. Research has shown that rhyming brings about reading success. Children who learn to rhyme, learn to manipulate sounds by identifying and changing them in the spoken language. Once they become confident of their oral language skills, reading and writing comes naturally to children.

A teacher needs to spend only few minutes in a day to practice rhyming. It can be done through books, songs, finger plays or games. 

In this post i am going to share with you few songs that i sing with my class to build the rhyming skill.

I incorporate rhyming in my daily schedule simply by singing this goodbye song with my kiddos at the end of the day.

You can go to pinterest by clicking HERE for more ideas on the same.

Another great song to sing is "Oh, my! No More Pie". When i sing this song for the first time i let the whole group echo back each line. Then we do solo singing and each child gets to recite one line.

Click on the LINK to download the song lyrics

A song that is a favorite with my class is "Down By the Bay" by Raffi

Children love coming up with new words that rhyme with the animals in the song.

I write the words on a chart and put pictures of animals. Children find the rhyming words and match them to the animals.

They also work on their own sheets and try to think of rhyming words.

After we have had enough practice with the original song, I let children come up with rhyming words for different animals. We do this as a whole group.

Children then work individually to create their own verse for the song. We compile it into a class book.

If you like these activities visit my TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS STORE to download them.

Hope you found these songs useful. In my next post i will share fun activities that you can do with your little ones to encourage them to rhyme.

Till then enjoy singing!

New Year

New year wishes to all my readers. I know its coming a tad late but i was so busy soaking in all the fun and excitement of the holiday season that i couldn't bring myself to be near any mode of technology. I rang in the new year in the largest salt desert in the world and of course was mesmerized by its size and beauty.

 

 And the fact that i could practice the art of doing nothing there added to my joy.

But now i am back in full action as school reopened today. Even though i cherish quiet time, i also look forward to the noise and chatter that school brings with it. My little ones were full of stories to tell but to listen to 26 kids at the same time can be a daunting task. 

So to give everybody a chance to speak, i made my kiddos sit in a circle and asked them to listen closely. I told them them that i would pose questions in the middle to see who was listening and whoever could answer would get my magic sprinkles which would make them sharper and smarter. Alright you have to be a 5 Year old to believe that!
So if a kid said i spent my holidays in my grandparents home, i would ask the kids after some time to name the friend who said that. It surely tickled my kiddos and my goal of getting everyone to listen got accomplished.

We also discussed why people made goals during the new year and talked about things we would like to learn in this year.

If you would like to use this idea, you can copy the image below and enlarge it on a word document.

Hope you all had a great start to the new year. I will be back soon with more ideas to help you make the educational journey of your little ones more fun  !