Lots of children come to Kindergarten already able to hear words that sound alike, but there are some children who struggle with many aspects of phonemic awareness. I use a puppet, because they are my favorite teaching tools, to reinforce rhyming and try to help all children become successful. I named this guy Sam the Lamb,
And when he comes to the classroom to visit he brings his ‘rhyme chime,’ which is a little metal xylophone. Every time Sam hears rhyming words he rings the chime. When I am using Sam I try to use simple rhymes that are close together, and then reinforce the matching sounds with the chime. I found a trade book titled See You Later, Alligator that I read to the class – but you really could just read the book that I made as a followup. The original book was not really a pattern – some pages said “see you with…,” other pages said “see you on…” and some said “see you at…”
In my remake I used the same sentence for each page “see you with …” I also introduced the word ‘with’ as a sight word at that time. The reason I loved this book was that the 2 rhyming words are right next to each other, which makes them very easy to hear. ”See you with a truck, duck.” After reading and using the rhyme chime several times, I sometimes allowed children to ring the chime for Sam the Lamb when they heard the rhyme. The book I gave the children already had an animal on each page – we had read the rhymes several times. I gave them a sheet with the rhyming objects – some they just had to draw. But I liked this activity much more than a ditto matching rhyming objects because the product was a book they could read and reread.
Please click on this link for a blank copy of this book, and the rhyming objects.
