Growing, Learning Kids

One of the language developments a toddler or preschooler goes through in getting ready for reading is to hear and recognize rhyming words. This helps them recognize phonetic patterns - for example, if your child knows “Cat” and “Hat” rhyme, they will be able to sound out how to read h-a-t by recognizing the “at” letter combination.

 Earlier we talked about creating educational, language learning cards for your child. Pull out your cards and sort through all the rhyming images: “dog, hog, frog, log” and match them up into sets. Review one particular rhyming series your child showing them all the images except one. “Dog. D-og” “Frog. Fr-og”

Then ask them which card goes with the rest. “Look - here are two cards. One of these sounds like this group. L-ad or L-og. Which one goes with Dog and Frog?” Start simple - with only two options and increase the difficulty as your child progresses.

Ways to make the game more challenging would include:

• Adding more than one set of rhyming words: ‘Hat, Mat Bat’ and ‘Ham, Sam, Jam’
• Use the rhyming sets to play “Go Fish” - include several different groups of rhyming words.
• Give the child one card from each rhyming group and have them match up pairs as they draw a new card from your hand.