How Rhyming Helps Children Learn to Read

Many learn-to-read programs use rhyming to help kids learn sight words and word patterns. As adults, we may not realize the importance of this little skill, as we automatically recognize rhymes around us and even overlook them in our favourite songs. Being able to hear and identify rhyming patterns can help children learn to read more quickly. Here’s why this skill is important for children and how you can help your kids have fun with rhymes.

How Rhyming Helps Children Learn to Read. Photo of mom reading to her two children by Tima Miroshnichenko via Pexels.

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What is Phonological Awareness?

For most of us, reading is a skill we take for granted. We read cereal boxes and bus stop ads and social media posts without even thinking about the words that flash before us. For a pre-reading child, language and words can feel overwhelming. Many words have a lot of letters and many books have a lot of words. It’s a big, confusing code that needs to be cracked. This is where phonological awareness comes in.

Learning Differentiated explains, “A child’s brain first processes language as one large entity. Slowly they start to realize that language consists of individual words, then that those words are broken up into syllables, and lastly that syllables are broken into single sounds. Collectively, those skills encompass phonological awareness. “

This is why reading begins with alphabet awareness. As my kids’ Leapfrog Fridge Phonics toy sang, “Every letter makes a sound and…” In spoken language, we blur these sounds together to form words; in teaching reading, we must again break the sounds apart to help our kids recognize each letter sound. Phonological awareness is about helping our children see the individual sounds in words, and then see how those sounds go back together to form words.

Rhymes Aren’t Just Silly Sounds

Rhymes aren’t just about silly sounds; they are patterns within words. Having to sound out every word is a slow and often agonizing process (as anyone who has sat with a beginning reader knows). When a child can recognize that dog and hog have similar sounds, they can read much more quickly. This gives them a greater feeling of success and confidence, which can encourage them to read more and have more fun reading.

Rhyming helps kids move from recognizing what one letter says to what two or more letters say together. All About Learning Press notes that rhyming is “a crucial skill that lays the foundation for reading success! Children who have strong rhyming skills are better equipped to recognize patterns in words and develop phonemic awareness, making the reading journey smoother and more enjoyable.”

Nursery rhymes and older kids’ books recognize the importance of this skill. Dr. Seuss books are notorious for their silly sounds and endless plays on words, even creating meaningless words to build rhymes. Reading programs often group rhyming words into “word families” to help kids practice sight reading and recognizing these patterns. Of course, a silly story full of silly rhyming words is much more fun than a long list of similar words.

Author Crystal Bowman shares, “Text written with repetition and rhyme is a help to a struggling reader because the repetition helps them learn new words, and the rhyme helps them with pronunciation (they know what the word needs to sound like).” When every vowel makes multiple different sounds, it can be helpful to recognize that vowels make the same sound when they go with certain consonants (like at, bat, cat, rat, hat).

Read-aloud Rhyming Books

Reading aloud to our children is key to helping kids learn to read. Reading rhyming books aloud can introduce phonological awareness as kids begin to hear the rhythm and patterns in words. Author Robert Hicks explains why his books are written in rhyme: “Reading nursery rhymes and rhyming stories to babies and young children helps establish the ear-brain connection for discriminating sound units.”

Some kids are more attune to rhythm and rhyme, patterns, and sounds. I’ve now taught five kids how to read; one basically taught herself to read, two have struggled, and two followed the usual reading milestones. We do a lot of read-alouds and really enjoy rhyming stories, but each child still develops in their own way. I have noticed that my child who struggles the most to read is also the child who doesn’t seem to be able to recognize rhyming words.

How Rhyming Helps Children Learn to Read. Photo of mom reading to her son by Tara Winstead via Pexels.