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A
Rhyme in Time |
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We
have received a number of questions from parents about their child's inability to rhyme.
In response to these concerns, we are posting the following email and reply. (Please see
FAQ
for additional emails).
I was watching (a certain talk show) about children with learning
disabilities, and the guest author diagnosed a student as disabled because he could not
rhyme
I asked my son to name a word that rhymed with cat. He
replied, car.
Should I be concerned that he cannot rhyme? Rhyming is one
of the last auditory discrimination skills (the ability to differentiate between and among
letter sounds) that an emergent reader develops. In fact, rhyming is not an ability
that is automatically acquired it is a skill that must be taught. If your son
cannot rhyme, it may be because no one ever explained to him what the word rhyme
means.
Webster defines rhyme as a similarity of
sounds of two or more words, esp. at the end of lines of poetry. Given
that loose definition, your son was right cat and car do
have similar sounds. To better clarify the term, you may want to explain to your son
that it is the final or ENDING sounds of each word that must be the same. cAT, hAT,
bAT, sAT
gO, tOe, hOe, knOw. (see below for a supplemental list of rhyming words.)
The Phonemic Awareness Process:
Phonemic awareness is a childs basic understanding that speech is composed of
a series of individual sounds. The process goes something like this:
- First, the child learns to recognize the initial sound the sound of the
first letter in a word.
- Next, he will recognize the final or ending sound in a word.
- Sometime during this process, he will begin to recognize the medial or middle
sound.
An example of this process using the word cat would be as follows:
first: /k/ which is the sound of the letter c; second: /t/ which is the sound of t; third:
/a/ which is the short vowel sound of the letter a. Lastly, he will begin to
recognize the sounds of letter combinations: such as in the word chirp
beginning /ch/ and ending /rp/.
If your son is doing well in other areas
and just cannot grasp the concept of rhyming, give him some time. Rhyming
is one of those developmental tasks that a child acquires when he is ready. In the
meantime, tell him that he is a number one son! |
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| In addition to reciting nursery rhymes,
you may want to ask your local librarian for books with rhyming text. When playing
your own rhyming games with your child, you may find the following list helpful: |
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bat, cat, rat, sat, fat, splat |
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day, play, say, way, clay |
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king, sing, fling, thing, wing |
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chop, drop, hop, shop |
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gate, plate, late |
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cake, shake, flake, take, make, awake |
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ice, mice, nice, rice |
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drip, ship, lip, slip, trip, snip |
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can, man, pan, tan |
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fill, hill, will, till, quill |
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cap, map, flap, tap, gap, lap, nap, rap |
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