I’m so grateful that this blog post and others are helpful for you, Jennifer. I completely understand. I have four dyslexic children and I was able to spot those signs and symptoms much earlier with the younger ones.

You will find our Dyslexia Resources page helpful if you haven’t found it already. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns or need help with anything.

Thank you so much for sharing this, Katy. Rhyming seems so easy for us adults but it really is a difficult concept for some little ones. I love that your four-year-old is now initiating it with you, asking if words rhyme and then coming up with even more rhymes! Way to go, both of you!

How exciting, Catherine! Are you seeing the new movie or the musical live? I’d love the opportunity to see it live.

Karla,
You don’t mention your students’ age. Producing multiple rhymes for a single word can be hard to understand for very young children. From a phonological awareness standpoint, being able to produce one rhyme for a word is great and I wouldn’t worry about producing multiple rhymes too much.

To work on it, however, just play games with it in a light-hearted way. Pick something in the room that is very easy to rhyme, like chair. Then ask for a rhyme. Ask another student for a different rhyme (if you have more than one student at a time). Provide an additional rhyme of your own. See how far you can keep it going. Chair-hair-bear-care-zare-pair… (Nonsense words are fine!). When your students can’t come up with any more, count how many rhymes they came up with (yes, the group total including the ones you provided) and write it down. The next time you play, try to beat the number. “Last time we played this, we had 3 rhymes. This time, let’s try to beat 3. Let’s get 4 or more. Okay, are you ready? Let’s rhyme ‘boy’!” (or whatever word you think of next).

With occasional enthusiastic playing of this game, I think you will find your students improving in the number of rhymes they can think of for a word. However, as I mentioned, I wouldn’t worry about it too much and you can go on to the next thing while still playing with multiple rhymes.

Let me know how it goes or if you have further questions.

Julie,
I’m sorry your son is struggling with rhyming. It can be a tricky skill for some kids to master!

Feel free to move forward with learning the letters, but you do need to work on rhyming so that he can master this foundational skill. Children who struggle with rhyming and other phonological awareness tend to struggle greatly with being able to sound out words. Don’t move forward with the Language Exploration portion of Lessons until he masters rhyming, even if he ends up doing the letter learning portion of all the Lessons first. Just use two bookmarks to keep your place for each portion.

Start with reading lots of books that contain rhyme. I recommend reading several books a day and really emphasizing the rhyming words by making the rhyming words a bit louder than the others. Here is a blog post round-up of reviews of rhyming picture books. Reread the books he enjoys a few days in a row and see if he can start to anticipate the rhyming words. Every day, spend time doing nursery rhymes, rhyming games, songs, poems, anything that he wouldn’t mind hearing over and over again.

When a young child has a problem with a phonological awareness activity (like rhyming or sentence length), Marie tries to turn it into a kinesthetic activity whenever possible. Let them “feel” what we are asking for. This can work with rhyming too. Clapping games like “Miss Mary Mack” add a kinesthetic activity that stresses the rhyme and makes it easier to understand. Rhyming songs and games are very good because they let kids experience what we mean in a different way.

Keep in mind the stages of rhyming as described in this blog post.

Hearing rhyme

This is what we do in Lesson 1 with Ziggy Body Parts and Lesson 2 with the Rhyming Cards.

Here’s another way to help your son hear rhyme:

“Listen to this sentence: There’s a goat in my boat. Now you say it.” Child repeats the sentence.

“Boat and goat rhyme. They have the same sound at the end: oat. Say these words with me: boat, goat.”

“I’ll say another sentence, and you’ll repeat the sentence and say the two words that rhyme. ‘There’s a fox in the box.” Child repeats the sentence, then identifies the words ‘fox‘ and ‘box‘ as rhyming.

With some kids, this activity may need to be repeated every day for two weeks straight before they catch on. Keep practice very short but frequent until the child catches on.

Recognizing rhyme.

This is what we do in Lesson 3, 4, 6 with the Get Out of the Wagon game, Lesson 5 with Rhyming Concentration, Lesson 7 with Stand Up or Sit Down. (Don’t start doing this until your is able to hear rhyme.)

Game ideas:

Matching games: Use the Pre-reading rhyming cards. Lay out three picture cards, two of which rhyme and one that does not. Say the words aloud with your learner. Have him identify the picture card that does not rhyme. Or, have him find the pair that does rhyme. After this is easy, lay out three pairs of rhyming cards and ask them to match up the rhymes.

You can play a concentration–like the matching game but with the cards face down, so the student has to remember where the rhyming word is.

Say two words and have your student decide if they sound alike at the end. For example:

mad – sad “YES”

bear – chair “YES”

ball – wet “NO”

Producing rhyme.

This is what we do in Lesson 8 with Forgetful Zebra, Lesson 9 with What’s in My Bag, Lesson 10 with Read a Book with Ziggy, and Lesson 11 with Name the Animals. Don’t attempt these until he hears and recognizes rhymes with some ease.

Here the child produces a rhyme to fit a sentence, such as:

Ziggy says (emphasizing the word to rhyme), “Look at the purple bunny. Doesn’t he look ______?” (funny)

or Ziggy asks for help since he keeps saying the wrong word and then says sentences like, “Let’s read a look together.” (“No, a book!”)

Or, take common objects (pen, spoon, sock, book) and have the child pick one up and try to rhyme, using a real or a made-up word, as long as it rhymes. He picks up the sock and says, “bock”.

I hope this helps. Focus heavily on rhyming for a couple of weeks, keeping it fun but workin at it consistently, and then let me know how it is going. Let me know if you have any questions.

It’s great your son caught on to rhyming so quickly! Way to go!

We are happy to hear that this has been helpful for your student!

You are welcome, Monica. Some children take a lot of exposure to rhyme to be able to recognize it and then a lot of recognizing it to be able to produce it. If your daughter keeps having trouble with rhyming, keep providing her opportunities to hear rhyming daily. Rhyming songs with hand movements and actions are especially effective with little ones, as the movements often occur with the rhymes and emphasize them. “Miss Mary Mack” comes to mind.

Karen,
You are welcome, but please do not discount your personal experience! There is a lot to be learned by homeschooling for many years. As a veteran homeschool mom myself, I think the best approach is a balanced approached between personal experience and continuing teacher learning or relearning.

Sandra,
What amazing improvement for your student! I especially love that he is becoming more confident. Congratulations to both of you on his progress, and thank you for sharing it with us.

Marie-Paule,
We will be taking a break for the holidays, but we have some wonderful new content planned for after the New Year!

Tammie,
We don’t want you to be intimidated! No, we want to help homeschool parents feel encouraged and supported. Is there a way we can help you to feel more confident as you begin teaching your child?

Stephanie,
We are so excited to hear that your son is not only making progress but seeing his own progress! That is very important for confidence and confident learners have less struggle.

Beccam,
Rhyming is such a fun game to play with your children. When my children were little time in the car was game time with rhyming, counting, finding the ABCs in order on signs, and so on. It was always fun but it was great learning too!

You are welcome! Have fun playing and learning with your daughter.

Marshall,
You are welcome. We are glad to be able to help like this.

Kara,
You are welcome. Have lots of fun with it too!

Mary, you are welcome!

Carol,
Be careful with that, holding off on having students spell rhyming words that are spelled differently until they have already learned, practiced, and mastered the individual patterns. Many kids could assume that all words just have random spellings that must be memorized if they are presented with multiple ways to spell the same sound all at once without having the opportunity to master each one before another is introduced (the way AAS does it).

However, if you did this activity as a review, after the student has already learned the words, then this could be a fun way to practice spelling.

Teresa,
When mine were younger, we would rhyme in the car. It was a silly game, with no rules except rhyme and no winners, but it made drive time go quicker and the kids enjoyed it.