The Rhyming Rabbit

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In the burrow he meets a worm and a mole but they too don’t appreciate his rhymes. It’s not until he digs his way out of the earth and into a field where he meets a friendly sheep that he finally finds a friend who likes rhymes as much as he does. The Rhyming Rabbit and the sheep spend the whole night and the next day making up new rhymes together. When he has to leave, the Rhyming Rabbit vows to return again the next day to see his new friend.

However, his books aren’t just fun to read. They are also extremely important as a beginning reading resource as they contain something incredibly helpful for young readers. While this strategy is similar to Chunky Monkey, the important part is that it forces children to focus on the word endings instead of scanning the word looking for chunks that may occur earlier on and not be as useful in decoding the word. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

I then introduce them to our strategy, Rhyming Rabbit and discuss how he can be useful when reading. We look at several short sentences and identify words for which we know rhymes. For example: The ball rolled to a stop. We look at the word stop and discuss words we know that rhyme with stop and how they could help us decode the word stop if we didn’t already know it. We practice this with several other sentences. In fact a study from the Center for Early Literacy Learning showed that there was a strong correlation particularly with nursery rhyme experience and stronger phonological skills early on. I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs. For this game you’ll need to create a set of index cards with pairs of rhymes written on them. For every pair of rhymes you write, also write a card that doesn’t rhyme. You then give your child a set of 3 cards, two of which rhyme. Your child will need to read the words and determine which two words rhyme and set the other one aside.

Match it – rhymes This is a simple and fun way to practice rhymes. On index cards, write a series of rhyming words. Do not repeat endings so as to make sure there aren’t multiple options for matches. For example, only include one set of rhymes that ends in at – like that and sat. I really liked this book due to the clever rhyming and captivating illustrations which make engagement with the book easy for young children.For the purposes of this game I create about 10 pairs. The objective of the game is to find the corresponding matches and correctly read them. The Rhyming Rabbit loves to make up entertaining poems, inspired by everything he sees, but the other rabbits don’t appreciate his talent for rhyme. Sad and lonely, the Rhyming Rabbit sets off one starry night all on his own – will he ever find someone to share his poems with? This is because rhyming essentially teaches children how language works. Specifically, it introduces them to the rhythm of language and helps them to notice the patterns sounds make in words.