Rhyming

[KrissiK]

Is rhyming innate, learned, developmental or something else? My 5 year old can't rhyme words. He's generally a very verbal child. He's got a large vocabulary and will talk your ear off if you let him. He's been read to since birth practically, and a good many children's books have rhyme and meter, but when we're doing phonics and we'll think of words that rhyme, he has no clue. He'll either give me a word that starts with the same consonant as my original word, or he'll make a compound word out of it or he'll just throw something random out there. My 6 year old is great at rhyming. Any thoughts?

[lgm]

One of mine had this trouble. He hadn't sorted out the different types of rhymes in his mind. To clear him up, I specified what type of rhyme I was looking for. For example to rhyme with time, I'd like lime, not maritime...i.e. true rhyme rather than light rhyme.

 

Ability to rhyme had no impact on his reading...he was at mid2nd grade level before he decided he needed to know what 'rhyme' meant precisely and that was after an explanation of the rule and an example.

[Dawn in OH]

My 7 year old daughter can shout out "cat, hat, sat, mat, fat all rhyme!".

My 8 year old son says, "Mom, does cat and bear rhyme?"

 

I've tried everything with this kid. He's just not getting rhymes. We've read poems. We've done worksheets where you get 10 words and have to circle all the words that rhyme with the given word.

 

Sometimes, because of the kid in question, I wonder if he's just being difficult. After all, he IS that kind of kid. I've even considered having his hearing checked.

 

This also reminds me that we haven't worked on this in a while. Maybe it's time to try again and see if there's any improvement.

[Ellie]

I don't think that ever crossed my mind as a problem...or even at all.:001_huh:

 

I wouldn't worry about it at all.

[LibraryLover]

Five is still young, and I am not an alarmist. I am all about the play at age 5. However *sometimes* not making the cat/bat/hat connection can *sometimes* be a sign of a processing issue, which has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence. I would keep playing with it for now; sing lots of little songs, read lots of little poems, and make up little rhyming jokes (limericks) etc and see how it goes.

http://www.succeedtoread.com/learntoread.html

[In The Great White North]

I would keep playing with it for now; sing lots of little songs, read lots of little poems, and make up little rhyming jokes (limericks) etc and see how it goes.

 

:iagree: Nursery rhymes and silly songs are all about rhymes. And, happily, most kids love them.

[yslek]

D doesn't naturally "get" rhyming. It's only been in the past month or two that she's started to understand the concept of rhyme. I don't know if it's from working in 100 EZ lessons, from my occasional pointing out words that rhyme, or using the Developing the Early Learner workbooks (where she missed amost all of the rhyming exercises in bk. 1 ), or what. Like Ellie, I don't see it as a huge deal; I don't think it would have even been on my radar had it not been for the DEL workbooks.

[cathmom]

Not understanding rhyming can be a sign of dyslexia. I would look at a list of symptoms and see if any others ring a bell. http://www.dys-add.com/symptoms.html#contents

 

However, I'm pretty sure that my just turned 6 yo does not have dyslexia, but he still can't understand rhyming. He is just starting to get it.

[LaxMom]

None of my four - aged 20 to 5 - have "gotten" rhyming until later. The 20 y.o. and the 8 y.o. are avid readers, and the 5 y.o.s (who still don't get it) are sounding out words.

 

I honestly have never thought to be concerned about it.

[abbeyej]

My ds didn't "get" rhyming till he was probably 7 -- though he'd been reading fluently since he was 3. I thought it was very weird, but he did eventually learn. I remember laughing about it as I read a "reading readiness" list that included rhyming and skipping, both of which were skills ds didn't master until well after he'd read Harry Potter and other such books to himself. ;)

 

Assuming he's otherwise verbal and doing well with his phonics instruction, I wouldn't worry about it. I do think ds had a lot easier time hearing rhyme within nursery rhymes and poetry, and we did read quite a bit of that, but it just took *time* before he could rhyme individual words. Now, if there were signs of other auditory challenges and dyslexia, I might be concerned. As a completely isolated skill, I think it's just developmental and he needs more time and opportunity...

 

(BTW, my dd could always rhyme. From the time she could enunciate enough words to rhyme, she did. Weirdly, she didn't learn to read till much later than her brother had.)

[EKS]

Not being able to rhyme is a sign of dyslexia in young children. It doesn't mean he has dyslexia, just to keep your eyes open to other signs of trouble.

[KrissiK]

I'm not concerned about it, really. I just thought it was strange that he doesn't know how to rhyme. I thought that was something that came naturally to everyone. And this is the kicker... today in his seatwork he had to come up with a word that rhymed with "hay". Well, we just had a whole list of "-ay" spelling words, but there were 2 sight words thrown in there "you" and "to". Ok, so I tell him, "hay... think about one of your spelling words we had this week". He says, "you". I about died (laughing, that is...:D)

[ElizabethB]

My daughter was reading almost anything at age 5, but at age 6 she could still not rhyme! I had to teach it to her explicitly:

 

Things rhyme when they have the same last VC sound: at, bat; mite, night.

 

Then, I had to teach why happy and sloppy don't rhyme but ma and pa do! I didn't realize rhyming was so complex until I had to break it down.

 

She also thought alliteration was rhyming for a while, we had to clear up that confusion.

 

Interestingly, her 4 year old brother learned to rhyme before he learned to blend words together, he's been spelling words for months but just learned to blend. He has been able to rhyme since he turned 4. He is generally better at math and not as good at verbal things compared to his sister, so his rhyming ability was very surprising and interesting to me.

[cillakat]

2nd Abbey. If all other reading instruction is going well, I wouldn't worry about it. But if there are other concerns surrounding learning and remembering sounds of letters, remembering letter names, having difficulty remembering reading instruction from one session to the next then I'd move quickly to investigate.

 

:)

katherine

[KrissiK]

OK, I won't worry about it, then. I looked up that dyslexia site and he doesn't show any of the other warning signs, except for a lot of ear infections when he was very young. Though he has his hearing tested at the dr. every year and passes the test. He reads very well, he doesn't mix up letters any more than any other child his age. He was talking before 2 years of age (and hasn't quit). Although I do suspect he may have some processing issues, which I'm just watching right now. He's still pretty young, so I don't want to get all paranoid, but I notice when I'm reading aloud to him and then ask basic narration questions, like "What was the story about" he has trouble telling me. Although in our phonics reader, there are comprehension questions and after he reads orally to me, he is able to answer all those questions. So, I don't know. Sometimes I think it's a paying attention issue. Another thing to throw into the mix is that he was a meth baby and was born pre-mature, and we adopted him at 4 months.