How To Teach Preschoolers To Master Rhyme and Rhythm

Teaching rhyme and rhythm is one of the best ways to inculcate basic phonemic awareness skills in your preschoolers. Learning rhyme not only helps your toddler to identify and form new rhyming words, it also helps him isolate sounds in the words and understand how different sounds frame the words. This understanding is important as it helps your kid a lot when he learns to write. So if you are planning to teach your kindergartener rhymes and looking for some of the best sources and tips for the same, look no further. Here, we list some easy yet effective tips to help you teach your little one rhyme and rhythm. Read on to discover all about it.

3 Important Stages Of Learning And Mastering Rhymes And Rhythms

Your preschooler can’t just jump to reciting rhymes. A toddler goes through these three stages that help him learn and master simplest to hardest rhymes. Those three crucial stages include:

1. Listening to rhyme

Your toddler listens to the rhyme repeatedly.

2. Identifying the rhyme

Your preschooler begins to recognize two similar sounding words i.e. rhyming words.

3. Producing the rhyme

Your kid thinks and comes up with rhyming words.

5 Helpful Tips To Teach Your Preschooler To Master Rhyme And Rhythm

1. Recite Rhymes Frequently

Repetition is the key to teach rhymes to your toddler. Recite some interesting rhymes and rhyming songs to your preschooler, and he will find them fun to learn. Sit in the front of your preschooler, recite a nursery rhyme, act some words of the rhyme, clap your hands, and encourage your kid to recite the rhyme after you. Make the recitation of the rhymes part of your kid’s regular learning and it will help develop fundamental phonological awareness skill in your kindergartner.

2. Play Nursery Rhymes On A Music Player

Record some fun nursery rhymes and play them on a music player when you and your preschooler are traveling via car and while your toddler is playing around in the house. Repeated listening to a played rhyme and rhythm will motivate your toddler to recite the rhyme on his own.

3. Let Your Kid Find Rhyming Words

Once your preschooler gets well-acquainted with a nursery rhyme after listening to it plenty of times, recite it by pausing at rhyming words. Encourage your kindergartner to come up with the rhyming word as you pause.

4. Read Out Rhyming Picture Books

Picture books are a great attraction for preschoolers. So, gift your kindergartner a rhyming picture book and read out rhyming words and rhyming songs from the book over and over again. Soon, your toddler will learn words that rhyme with one another and recite simple rhymes.

5. Make A Rhyming Chain

Form a group of six to seven preschoolers and make them sit in a circle. Provide a word to the first child and other kids in the circle should come up with a word, which rhymes with the first word, one-by-one in turn. For instance, if you provide the word ‘Bat’ to a child in the circle, the kid to his right should come up with word ‘Hat’, and kid next to him should say ‘Cat’, and so on in a circular order. When the preschoolers run out of rhyming words or say an improper word, the chain is broken. You can then start a new round.
Similarly, preschoolers can recite rhyming songs in rhythm that they have learnt. First kid should recite the first line of the rhyming song; and the next child should recite the next line. Likewise, complete the rhyming poetry in a rhythm. If a kid misses a line or recites an incorrect line, the rhyming chain is broken.