The last reading game we shared was , Mr Tongues’ House, a fun reading game for developing phonemic awareness. Today we will continue with a rhyming game that you can play using any picture book your child enjoys reading.

I would make the worst lyricists on the planet. The part of my brain that stores my phonological rhyming skills is permanently snoozing while the rest of my body tries frantically to cleverly conceal my inability to rhyme. Seriously – throw a word at me and ask me to throw back a word that rhymes; I’ll say something ridiculous that doesn’t rhyme, but it’ll make you laugh.

Why is the ability to rhyme so important? Rhyming is a skill that helps children read and write. When learning to read and write, children don’t need to acquire the rhyming skills of a Grammy award winning lyricists, (phew for me!), but it is important that they are phonologically aware, i.e.. they are able to hear the larger units of spoken language as well as the smaller parts.

When rhyming, children see the relationship between letter clusters that represent the same sounds in different words. E.g. hose, nose, pose, rose.

Reading Game: Cover the Rhyme

Cover the Rhyme is a simple game that you can play with your child using any picture book you have readily on hand.

Looking at the pictures in the book, ask the child to place a counter on the part of the picture that rhymes with a given word. Or they could also simply point to the part of the picture that rhymes with a given word.

For example, in these pages, (from Greetings from Sandy Beach by Bob Graham), ask the child to place a counter on the part of the picture that rhymes with the following:
• Hose – nose
• Flies – eyes
• Mat – hat
• Fox – box
• Band – sand, hand
• Made – spade
• Bat – hat
• Hurt – shirt
• Dear – ear
• Dance – pants
• Far – car

As an extension, can the child think of any other rhymes in the pictures?

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