In the recent past, not even as long as 50 years or so, parents very commonly would sing short songs, chants, and rhymes to their young children. These are often accompanied by hand actions, games, bouncing, and even rhythmic dancing. Current research shows that this trend is fading away. Today's children don't use rhymes and songs anymore and could be missing out on the key benefits. Since storytelling, rhyming, and singing can be done anywhere as well as at any time, we do not have to lose these arts forever.
You can sing or rhyme while your child is sitting at the table, bathing, getting ready for school, or eating their meals. You can easily incorporate songs and rhymes to your child's daily routine. Repetition helps your child remember words and reinforces the brain during its developmental stages; this is why rhymes and rhythm are vital to improving your child's literacy skills.
Your child's early education foundation is secured when you expose them to consistency. Using rhythm, songs, and rhymes to catch your child's attention is also a fun way to learn. These rhymes teach all about the sounds of words before the kids understand their meaning. Children find it easier to remember the sounds of words when you use rhymes. Learning literacy early is important; here are six reasons why this is crucial.
1Improves Memory And Cognitive Development
While nursery rhymes appear to be menial, they include the steps that help a child to have sharp recall and form memory skills. Rhyming verses almost always follow the pattern of having a beginning, a middle, and an end. Using rhymes will help a child remember cause and effect as well as sequential orders. The ability to string sounds and words together in a new order, almost like beads, develops as a child learns to use rhymes. Children will also learn to understand the context or meaning of new words fully when they are exposed to nursery rhymes.
Learning to separate words down into basic phonemes occurs with a child's continued exposure to rhymes. Thus, a child's decoding skills and comprehensive abilities are improved. Songs and rhymes paint vivid mental pictures that improve the children's visual imagery. Rhyming verses are entertaining; this is why children pick them as their choice of reading material.
2Rhyming Develops Literacy
Better reading skills often occur in those who constantly use rhymes, as several studies indicate. Phonetics and word constituents are the basic literacy elements introduced to readers in nursery rhymes. For example, when a child repeats a simple phrase such as "the cat on the mat has a hat," the child understands that "at" is the common word. Developing "phenomic awareness" in this manner allows your child to have a better understanding of the words; eventually, the results of early education increase a child's capacity for reading. Studies made on the literacy levels of school-aged children show that those who were exposed to rhymes are more advanced than those who weren't.
It shows how important it is to focus on rhymes, songs, and activities related to rhythm even before your child goes to school. Make rhymes a part of your daily activities, like singing while taking a bath, brushing teeth, and getting dressed. "This is the way we wash our hands, eat our veggies, brush our teeth, clean the room..." and "Here we go round the mulberry bush..." are great activity song choices with catchy rhythms. Expose your child to the fun world of rhymes as early as you can.
3Rhyming Promotes Language Development
Rhymes encourage language development in many ways. When children listen to rhymes, they remember with ease the sounds of vowels and consonants. A child learns how to make words from sounds by repeating rhyming verses. Children will also be able to communicate effectively as well as learn proper pitch, rhythm, and inflection. When you introduce a child to unknown words that expand their imagination with nursery rhymes, for example, the "Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe," you are increasing their vocabulary.
Children will learn to understand new words when they try to act out the rhymes they know. When they do this, they'll know how to differentiate the words that rhyme and the words that don't. Playing rhyming games to pass away the time helps strengthen these skills. Giving your child a word, say "pig," and letting them think of other words that rhyme with it is an entertaining activity for both the parent and the child.
4Promotes Social And Emotional Development
This game is beneficial for your child, even if it may seem pointless at times. While a child is just enjoying themselves, they are actually learning memory skills, language, and the fundamentals used in reading when reciting rhymes. To increase your child's proficiency in rhyming, a fun activity is making a rhyming book together. Write the word "fish" in bold, fun letters and write down below all the words that rhyme with it. The foundation of childhood literacy can be strengthened through rhymes.
Your child is being prepped for their future reading skills when you let them listen to rhymes, like "Jack Be Nimble." It's been shown that there's a connection between identifying which words rhyme and knowing why they rhyme. Great rhymers also usually end up becoming good readers.
5Good Rhymers Tend To Be Good Readers
Studies have shown that there is a compelling relationship between mastering rhymes and the child's ability to grasp reading concepts. One critical avenue for building foundational skills in literacy is the use of rhyme. Rhyming verses allow young children to hear the sounds of the words and then help them identify those with the same sounds.
The basic, proper skills needed for developing speech and literacy are encouraged by using nursery rhymes. A child learns discriminative listening skills. It is important for grasping the essence of the words.
6Rhyming Develops Speech
Rhyming can improve your child's voice and pitch modulation and articulation. Without fear of criticism, a child is free to recite rhymes as ridiculously or as loudly as they want. The wonderful rhythm and content of nursery rhymes appeal to a child's need for fun. Reading the words in rhymes exercises the mouth and jaw muscles.
A frequently overlooked fact is that using rhymes often improves a child's comprehension and listening skills. The use of rhythm and rhymes can effectively teach this skill. Word segmentation is a concept that can be easily taught with the use of lines and verses.
A larger vocabulary, improved auditory discrimination, and increased phonemic awareness are the benefits gained by using rhyming skills and rhymes. The literacy process hinges around these basic fundamental skills. If your child is armed with these, they will be able to learn how to speak, write, and communicate with ease.
Rhyming is an entertaining way to learn, so it's not difficult to include it in your daily routine. Rhymes allow children to take their literacy skills to the next level, so never take this learning process for granted. Make your child ready and competent in the modern world by sparing some time to read rhymes and speak in verses.
Before her mother got sick a year into college, Kelly Palmer was going for a degree in marketing. But needing to go home to care for her didn't stop her desire to learn, to grow, to read – and so she never stopped doing those things. She considered trying to write her own children's book, a whim that led to her learning about the struggles of the self-published author. She decided to learn more, and dove deeper into this thread.
Kelly wanted to do something. She wanted to help, and so she started digging deeper, trying to find a solution, anything she could contribute to. That's what how she ended up Children's Book Roundup, surrounded by people who wanted to help those struggling authors who needed a leg up on what seems like an impossible battle.
