Rhyming teaches children how language works. It helps them notice and work with the sounds within words. In this post we will show you 10 ways you can explore rhyming with your children.
Rhyming helps children experience the rhythm of language. As they become familiar with rhyming pieces they learn to anticipate the rhyming word. This is helping them with making predictions.
10 Things To Do With The Poem ‘Imagine’
We are going to look at the poem ‘Imagine’ by Roland Egan and use it to show you ten different ways to use the rhyming patterns in this poem with your children.
1. Read the poem to your class and see how quickly they can memorise it. Start by treating it as a statement-and-response exercise with you reading the ‘Imagine …’ lines and the children responding with the rhyming sequel. This helps to fix the rhyme of the poem.
2. Make copies of the poem and cut them up into 13 single-line strips. Give these to pairs or groups of children to re-assemble with the rhymes matching.
3. Prepare versions of the poem with all the initial animals deleted and written on separate pieces of card. Ask the children to place each animal on its correct line-end.
4. Make new rhymes by replacing existing ones. These can be minor – e.g. changing big to small and creating rhymes such as Imagine a snail/ As small as a nail.
5. Take this one step further by giving the childen more scope to improvise – Imagine a lark/ On a swing in a park.
6. Invite the children to replace those repetitions of big and long with six fresh adjectives.
7. Get the children to fold a sheet of A4 paper to make eight rectangles. Then illustrate each of the rhymes, e.g. a snail as big as a whale and a bee as big as a tree.
8. Keeping the pattern of the original, compose some brand new rhymes. This is an ideal opportunity to introduce the children to a rhyming dictionary.
9. A whole-class poem could be created in the form of an illustrated alphabet book, with children contributing one line each. So, for example, Imagine an ant / bear crocodile … and so on, all the way to zebra.
10. After all this work with animals, why not change the theme and create ‘Rhyming Restaurants’ beginning each line I’m serving a …. Or maybe ‘Wacky Wardrobes’, here starting I’m wearing a… with each item going on to a neatly turned rhymed ending?
There’s lots here to get you started exploring end rhymes. We’d love to hear how you get on so feel free to leave comments and examples of the children’s work in the comments section below.
Have fun!
David and Mike – Goodeyedeers
