Write out a nursey rhyme on the left part of the sheet, but do not write out the last word of each line.Make a fold down a sheet of posterboard or paper, about a quarter of the way in from the right edge.(This game familiarizes players with the concept of rhyme scheme.) The animal with the most rhymes is declared the winner! (Optional: to celebrate, everyone in the class has to make the sounds of the winning animal.) When nobody can think of any more rhymes, count up how many rhymes in each column. ![]() Keep going around the room, just one entry at a time, trying to come up with as many words as the children can think of for the animals listed. Write each valid rhyme down under the name of that animal. To Play: Go around the room and ask each child to contribute one rhyme only for any of these 4 animals. At the top of the columns, write and underline “CAT,” “DOG,” “COW,” and “PIG.” (If you are so inclined, you can doodle the animals by their names, or have one of the kids be your illustrator.) Setup: Make 4 columns on a whiteboard (or sheet of paper). (This game takes rhyming to the next level.) When the game is over, save that list of rhyming pairs. ![]() Write the rhyme beneath the word that was chosen. If needed, the other children can help (raising hands, of course). Write the word on whiteboard or paper and give the child who picked it the first chance to come up with a rhyming word. To play: Go around the room and have each child close his or her eyes and pick a strip from the Rhyming Hat. Cut the words into strips, fold them, and mix them up in a hat. Setup: Write a list of single-syllable words that the children will know, at least as many as the number of players. (A game that introduces rhyme to beginners.) (Shoot me an email at and let me know how they go!) These interactive games are recommended for ages 4-8. If your crew responds anything like the kids I’ve played these with, you’re going to have a blast. I was inspired by Imagination Soup to share these activities with you, to try at home or in class. Over the years, I’ve developed games that I use to teach the principles of rhyme, rhyme scheme and meter. At school visits, I love the opportunity to teach early grades about poetry, especially the kind that uses meter and rhyme. Rhyme is fun to write, but even more fun when I get to read them out loud to an audience. ![]() ![]() These new books, which started with “Kindergarten, Here I Come!” weave a series of humorous poems in each volume around different childhood experiences (new grades at school, holiday celebrations, etc.). Of the 25 kids’ books I’ve published to date, 20 are in rhyme, including my current “Here I Come!” series for Penguin Workshop. Milne, or a mother who had a penchant for poetry, but one way or another, I was destined to become a rhymester myself. I’m hopelessly stuck in children’s verse. Many of us move on to more erudite literature as we mature, but not me. Much like songs, verse just makes language more fun, memorable, and predictable (in the best possible way). At bedtime, all of my kids as preschoolers gravitated to books in verse. My oldest son would babble nonsense rhymes endlessly in his crib (-he is 24 and doesn’t do that anymore). Something about meter and rhyme taps into an innate and playful way our super-computer brains build our language muscles and phonemic fitness. I could recite Old King Cole and Peas Porridge Hot by heart long before I could decode all those words from our Mother Goose book. Nursery rhymes have stood the test of time for good reason.
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