Research has shown that silly rhymes not only play a vital role in a child’s early development, but they also help them learn to read.
Experts believe that rhyming aids in learning to read because it teaches a child to hear sound patterns that are necessary to understand when reading.
Rhymes also help an emerging reader who is learning phonics. Phonics teaches a child to sound out a word. Well, as we all know, there are letters that have several sounds. This is probably the toughest part of reading for a child. How do rhymes help this? Consider the “o”. When a child sees the word “book”, they usually have no problem with sounding out the “b”. However, the “o” can sound like it does in the word “box”, or the word “bought”. Simply relying on the rules of phonics can be confusing. When a child learns rhymes, he hears sound patterns such as “I took a book”, and this helps him make sense of the words that contain those confusing letters.
So, what does all this mean? It means have fun with rhymes and encourage your child to practice rhyming words.
Experts believe that rhyming aids in learning to read because it teaches a child to hear sound patterns that are necessary to understand when reading.
Rhymes also help an emerging reader who is learning phonics. Phonics teaches a child to sound out a word. Well, as we all know, there are letters that have several sounds. This is probably the toughest part of reading for a child. How do rhymes help this? Consider the “o”. When a child sees the word “book”, they usually have no problem with sounding out the “b”. However, the “o” can sound like it does in the word “box”, or the word “bought”. Simply relying on the rules of phonics can be confusing. When a child learns rhymes, he hears sound patterns such as “I took a book”, and this helps him make sense of the words that contain those confusing letters.
So, what does all this mean? It means have fun with rhymes and encourage your child to practice rhyming words.