As a first grade teacher I spent a large part of my instructional day teaching reading to my students. There are many ways to teach reading, such as phonics, context clues, use of pictures to comprehend the story, etc. But I find that using rhymes can be the most fun and easy way to increase a child’s vocabulary. Once a child truly understands what rhyming words are, it can be one way to help a child who is struggling. Rhymes are words that have the same vowel sound in the middle of the word and the same ending sound. The first letter or letters can be different. For example, “pig and wig” or “pet and set.” When the child gets the idea of what to do, he/she can add other words to the list such as “big, dig, fig and jig” and “bet, get, jet, let, met, net, and wet.” He/she soon realizes that it is fun to do! I wrote the poem called Rhymes in my book to illustrate this concept even further.
