The Rhyming Rabbit

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In the burrow he meets a worm and a mole but they too don’t appreciate his rhymes. It’s not until he digs his way out of the earth and into a field where he meets a friendly sheep that he finally finds a friend who likes rhymes as much as he does. The Rhyming Rabbit and the sheep spend the whole night and the next day making up new rhymes together. When he has to leave, the Rhyming Rabbit vows to return again the next day to see his new friend. This makes this reading strategy, specifically directing a child to focus on finding rhymes, especially powerful. Using this strategy can help them make connections between other word patterns and ultimately make them much more fluent readers. However, his books aren’t just fun to read. They are also extremely important as a beginning reading resource as they contain something incredibly helpful for young readers.

I then introduce them to our strategy, Rhyming Rabbit and discuss how he can be useful when reading. We look at several short sentences and identify words for which we know rhymes. For example: The ball rolled to a stop. We look at the word stop and discuss words we know that rhyme with stop and how they could help us decode the word stop if we didn’t already know it. We practice this with several other sentences.

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One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. It was great to hold the book in my hand without it vanishing in the air the way the songs did. This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published. Most children love acting and it’s a tremendous way to improve their reading. I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. This is because rhyming essentially teaches children how language works. Specifically, it introduces them to the rhythm of language and helps them to notice the patterns sounds make in words. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

This is another strategy I created for my students when I saw a need for it. I noticed students doing really well using beginning sounds as clues and even looking for chunks.Match it – rhymes This is a simple and fun way to practice rhymes. On index cards, write a series of rhyming words. Do not repeat endings so as to make sure there aren’t multiple options for matches. For example, only include one set of rhymes that ends in at – like that and sat. To introduce this strategy, I begin with the book, The Rhyming Rabbit. This is a story about a lonely rabbit with an affinity for creating poems. None of the other animals in the forest appreciate his rhymes, until one night he meets a friendly sheep who loves to rhyme too. Rhyme Battles For this you’ll need to set a timer for say, 15 seconds. Give your child a word and have them tell you as many words as they can think of that rhyme with that word. You will record them on a whiteboard. Then you will trade of and you will choose a diferent word and do the same. The winner is the person who thought up the most rhymes.

While this strategy is similar to Chunky Monkey, the important part is that it forces children to focus on the word endings instead of scanning the word looking for chunks that may occur earlier on and not be as useful in decoding the word. I really liked this book due to the clever rhyming and captivating illustrations which make engagement with the book easy for young children. The Rhyming Rabbit loves to make up entertaining poems, inspired by everything he sees, but the other rabbits don’t appreciate his talent for rhyme. Sad and lonely, the Rhyming Rabbit sets off one starry night all on his own – will he ever find someone to share his poems with?

I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs. In fact a study from the Center for Early Literacy Learning showed that there was a strong correlation particularly with nursery rhyme experience and stronger phonological skills early on. For this game you’ll need to create a set of index cards with pairs of rhymes written on them. For every pair of rhymes you write, also write a card that doesn’t rhyme. You then give your child a set of 3 cards, two of which rhyme. Your child will need to read the words and determine which two words rhyme and set the other one aside. This is a fun story about a rabbit who likes to make up rhymes about everything and anything! Unfortunately for him, his other rabbit friends find his incessant need to make up rhymes about everything incredibly irritating and keep telling him to stop doing it.