4 y.o. who can't rhyme?

[FairProspects]

Ds can rhyme when reciting Mother Goose (which we do a lot here) or when I play fill-the-blank word with him, but otherwise he can't rhyme. :confused:

 

If I say "peach" for example and ask him to rhyme, even giving examples, he gives me "pot, pan, potato" etc. He definitely gets phonetic sounds and is matching the front sound of the word rather than the back sound.

 

Is this a problem for future reading/phonemic awareness? Ds 1 was an expert, silly, nonsense rhymer, so its a new dilemma for me. How do you even go about coaching that with a 4 y.o.? Does it even matter or is phonics (which he gets) more important? We read tons of silly language poems, but he doesn't seem to have gotten the concept.

[NanceXToo]

I'm sure he will get the hang of it within the next few months and he'll be rhyming before you know it. Just keep throwing rhymes at him in play... keep rhyming pairs of words and encouraging him to join in... correct him without making a big deal out of it... I think that's when my son started rhyming. sometimes he'd get it "right," other times he'd throw out a word that started with the same letter but didn't rhyme... he'll get the hang of it though. I wouldn't worry about it yet.

[trying my best]

rhyming is a milestone. We had DS's 4 year old screening and he did not do rhymes correctlt that time. His rhymes were Peach - pen, pot and pilot... :lol:

but the following week something clicked with him and he started doing real rhymes. Remind him to change the first sound :)

[boscopup]

I think it's ok for that age. My oldest picked up on it around 4 or 5, but really wasn't great at it until 6. He started reading at 4 and was reading at a 2nd grade level by 5, so it clearly didn't hurt his reading at all. The phonemic awareness is good!

 

Oh, and my 4 year old doesn't rhyme yet either. :)

[redsquirrel]

OMG, I had to work with my son on this. It brings back such memories.

 

I would get a book that was all about the rhyme. THe one I used more than any others is called "when a bear bakes a cake" It is a whole book of nothin' but couplets.

 

We sounded like this:

Me: " 'When a bear bakes a cake, he throws it in the lake.' Cake, Bake, that's a rhyme. Words that rhyme sound the same at the end."

 

do this for every. page. Try not to go crazy.

 

You can also make your own rhymes for him and let him see the model. Say "peach, beach, meach, teach, neach, deach. Now you try with peach." Yes, I know those aren't all real words. The point is to let him hear the sounds.

[Crimson Wife]

I was really worried about DS' inability to rhyme at 4 3/4 because he had spent a year in speech therapy for articulation issues. His old therapist had been concerned about his auditory processing, and problems with rhyming is a red flag for CAPD. Then all of a sudden one day everything "clicked" and he could rhyme up a storm. Not only that, but within a month he was able to decode CVC words. That was July and now he's fluently reading Henry & Mudge type books.

[twoxcell]

My ds had a hard time rhyming at age 4, and even 5. He is 7.5 now and reads on a 3rd-4th grade level, so it did not hinder him. Now my dd who is 5 has been able to rhyme very well since 3-4.

[nd293]

Ds can rhyme when reciting Mother Goose (which we do a lot here) or when I play fill-the-blank word with him, but otherwise he can't rhyme. :confused:

 

If I say "peach" for example and ask him to rhyme, even giving examples, he gives me "pot, pan, potato" etc. He definitely gets phonetic sounds and is matching the front sound of the word rather than the back sound.

 

 

Dd could rhyme by 3yrs, and was starting to read at 4yrs; ds turns 4yrs in a couple of day and can't recognise the R at the beginning of his name yet. I'm not worrying, but I do realise that we are going to be operating on a very different learning schedule than we did with dd. I don't expect to have done more than letter recognition by the end of this year. I won't start to teach reading until he can "hear" letter sounds in the ways that you mention - rhyming and first letter sounds. I do think that's a very important first step.

 

Nikki

[Ariston]

My son rhymed easily at age 4, but was very slow to learn how to read (is still learning slowly.)

 

My daughter could not rhyme when she turned 4. She knew she couldn't and it would drive her crazy. Her rhymes for peach would have been apple, pear and banana.

 

Then one day it clicked. She has learned to read much more quickly than her brother. So in my (limited) experience, it didn't correlate at all with how quickly or well my children are learning to read.

[Ariston]

Also what helped my daughter was making make believe rhymes, like "peach, each, seach, leach, feach, cheach, etc."

 

I think it can be hard to come up with actual words that rhyme when it is a new concept. With made up words at least they get the idea of rhyming...

[kwickimom]

My almost 6 year old cannot rhyme at all, but he is whizzing through OPG and had no problem blending and he is reading just fine, so I am not worried at all

[Corraleno]

Do you have Bananagrams or a Scrabble game? You can make a word and then have your DS keep swapping out the first letter and saying the new word. I did that with magnetic letters on the fridge when DS was a toddler, so he learned to rhyme at the same time he learned to read simple CVC and CVCC words (around 3). DD had a harder time of it — maybe because we moved when she was 2 and we got a stainless steel fridge with no magnets. :tongue_smilie: She learned to rhyme by reading lots of Dr. Seuss books and then making up our own versions (I will not eat them with a pear, I will not mush them in my hair, I will not throw them in the air, I will not take them to a fair, etc.).

 

Jackie

[momofabcd]

My little secret is that I never did any phonemic awareness except being able to hear first sounds with my dc, and I have successfully taught three of them to read so far. My almost 6 year-old can now rhyme, but she couldn't when I started teaching her to read. She now reads very well.

[Farrar]

With my twins, one of them always seemed to get rhymes. The other took longer but then one day it just clicked. However, he still has trouble using rhymes to sound out words. He's beyond CVC words now and wouldn't get stuck on this one anymore, but for ease of example... if he sounded out "pot" and then saw "lot" he might get stuck and stumble over the letters all over again, even though there's a rhyming clue in the text. I guess rhymes just aren't his thing.

[LittleIzumi]

Dd could not at 4 but she can now at 5. :)

[ElizabethB]

My almost 6 year old cannot rhyme at all, but he is whizzing through OPG and had no problem blending and he is reading just fine, so I am not worried at all

:iagree:

 

My daughter was the same, but while I did not worry because she was reading and spelling well, I did eventually teach her to rhyme:

 

My daughter did not learn rhyming until she was 6 1/2. And then, I had to teach her in a mathematical manner although she is generally verbally advanced and mathematically a bit behind. (My son learned to rhyme when he was 4, and he's generally more mathematically inclined than verbally inclined!)

 

Anyway, I taught her that to rhyme, words have to end with the same vowel and consonant sound. If you use my UPP, you can easily illustrate how this works even with words spelled differently, for example, light and mite and might, you put a long vowel diacritical mark over the i's and put x's above the e in mite and the g and the h in might and light. (So, now they all end in a long i followed by a t visually as well as sound wise.)

 

Once she got this, I addressed CV and CCV words such as me, he, she, we, tree; hi by my try.

 

Then, words like old and cold and sold.

 

Then, the most complex rhyming case--why happy and sappy rhyme but happy and puppy don't even if they both end in the sound of pee. For weeks she insisted that words like happy and puppy should rhyme and had to ask dozens of people other than me to believe that they didn't!

[Susie in MS]

Gosh, is this really a problem? I have never even considered teaching my 5 1/2 yo dd to rhyme. She has gone though 1/2 of PP, the Primer for the Original McGuffey and is about to start the 1st McGuffey Reader. She reads road signs and store fronts. She reads Pathway Readers too. I just kinda figured she would just *get it* somewhere along the way as we read through poems.

[ChandlerMom]

Ds can rhyme when reciting Mother Goose (which we do a lot here) or when I play fill-the-blank word with him, but otherwise he can't rhyme. :confused:

 

If I say "peach" for example and ask him to rhyme, even giving examples, he gives me "pot, pan, potato" etc. He definitely gets phonetic sounds and is matching the front sound of the word rather than the back sound.

 

Is this a problem for future reading/phonemic awareness? Ds 1 was an expert, silly, nonsense rhymer, so its a new dilemma for me. How do you even go about coaching that with a 4 y.o.? Does it even matter or is phonics (which he gets) more important? We read tons of silly language poems, but he doesn't seem to have gotten the concept.

 

Rhyming is overrated. :D

 

Think about it: your ds shows phonetical awareness when he sees that peach pan and pot are alike. You could say they "rhyme at the front". ;) "Rhyming" traditionally means the end syllable sound matches. But sometimes poems bend that rule (for example interchanging n and m in the end). Some kids confuse rhyming with matching the final vowel. But in all these cases they are recognizing something similar between word sounds, and it's kind of arbitrary that "rhyming" only applies to one of these cases. It sounds like your ds just hasn't dialed in on this peculiar "rule" about what rhyming is. I wouldn't sweat it.

 

For some kids, things like rhyming and enunciation help them learn to read. For others, learning to read helps them learn to rhyme and enunciate. My DD's seemed to be the latter, and eldest was reading voraciously long before she could rhyme. :lol: But she got there.

 

Most curricula seem to assume rhyming teaches reading, but that may not be the case for your child. It probably has to do with whether a kid is more of an auditory or visual learner and I think more abstract thinkers struggle with rhyming because they see so many other ways to characterize sounds. But again, I wouldn't sweat it. Just keep exposing him to rhymes and the richness of language and it'll click when he's ready.

[SeekingSimplicity]

my dd2 was closer to 7 before she started to figure out the whole rhyming thing.

[NanceXToo]

Also what helped my daughter was making make believe rhymes, like "peach, each, seach, leach, feach, cheach, etc."

 

I think it can be hard to come up with actual words that rhyme when it is a new concept. With made up words at least they get the idea of rhyming...

 

My son makes up words like that, too, when he's trying to rhyme. I don't ever say "that's not a word," we just keep on making up rhyme sounds, and I tell him he's doing a good job rhyming. I agree, that can even help them get the idea.

[Murmer]

Rhyming can be difficult so I wouldn't worry. I would read more books with rhymes I love Jamberry and The Hungry Thing. Also its easier for kids to identify rhymes they hear like in a book finding 2 words that rhyme than having to independently come up with their own so start with that. Also nonsense rhymes are really fun like Dr. Suess' There's a Wocket in my Pocket.

[Ellie]

Honestly, I had no idea that such a thing was important when my dc were little. If I were looking for something to be concerned about, the abilty to rhyme wouldn't be on any list.

[Margo out of lurking]

Ds can rhyme when reciting Mother Goose (which we do a lot here) or when I play fill-the-blank word with him, but otherwise he can't rhyme. :confused:

 

If I say "peach" for example and ask him to rhyme, even giving examples, he gives me "pot, pan, potato" etc. He definitely gets phonetic sounds and is matching the front sound of the word rather than the back sound.

 

Is this a problem for future reading/phonemic awareness? Ds 1 was an expert, silly, nonsense rhymer, so its a new dilemma for me. How do you even go about coaching that with a 4 y.o.? Does it even matter or is phonics (which he gets) more important? We read tons of silly language poems, but he doesn't seem to have gotten the concept.

 

I never post on this board but noticed your post on the main forums page. My ds stumped me when he had problems rhyming in the same way you describe. Ds was 3 or 4, desperate to read, so I picked up Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. He became discouraged by the rhyming exercises, so we stopped. I tried a few months later, using Phonics Pathways instead. Within 20 lessons, he was reading almost anything on his own. He was a very early reader and, from that point on, self-taught.

 

I'm sharing this to encourage you. My ds's inability to rhyme at that time had no impact on his reading, then or in the future. :001_smile: