Rhythm and rhyme are woven into many aspects of our lives, such as oral story telling, conversations, literature, and music. These things are not only essential to learning language and connecting with one’s culture, but also crucial for brain development and concentration skills.
Beginning in infancy, humans find rhymes comforting and soothing. This also provides us with natural opportunities to explore patterns, phonemic awareness, and coordinated movements.
Rhyme is also supportive with a full body experience in which the rhythm of beats and music can support a vast variety of developmental skills. When looking at music specifically, keeping beat and tempo not only correlate with focus and attention, but also engage multiple parts of the brain at once. Coordinating one’s body with specific movements or at a specific pace support children’s understanding of sequence and control.
How to Support Language Development with Rhythm and Rhyme
- Read alouds
- This supports with the rhythm of words, but also practicing volume, tone, and pitch.
- Finger Play Games
- Acting out different words supports with easy recall and memorization.
- Sing and Read Nursery Rhymes
- The rhyming words encourage children to make
Rhyming Books We Recommend
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle
- Whose Knees Are These? by Jabari Asim
- Zin Zin Zin a Violin by Lloyd Moss
- Silly Sally by Audrey Wood
- Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino
- My Truck is Stuck! by Kevin Lewis
- Jamberry by Bruce Degen
- My Granny Went to Market by Stella Blackstone
- Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw
- Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker
- Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
