Rhyme Time

The big ideas

What the levels teach, in grown-up words.

• Rhyme lives at the end of a word. Cat and hat rhyme because everything after the first sound matches: at. Hearing that ending is a big step toward reading, because the same ending is usually spelled the same way.
• Word families share an ending. Cat, hat, bat and mat are the -at family. Once a child can read one, swapping the first letter reads the rest, which is why rhyming is taught alongside phonics.
• Not every swap makes a word. Hat, bat and mat are words; zat and jat are not. Knowing the difference is vocabulary at work, and it is where the fun of nonsense words comes from.
• Rhyme is about sound, not spelling. Night rhymes with kite and bear rhymes with chair, while home and come only look alike. English spelling is irregular, so the ear decides.
• Poems use rhyme on purpose. Rhymes at the ends of lines make poems and songs easy to remember and fun to say. Finishing a couplet means finding a word that fits both the sound and the sense.

Try it at home

Quick experiments that match the game.

1. Rhyme ping-pong. Say a word and bounce rhymes back and forth: cat, hat, bat, mat, sat. Silly made-up words are allowed as long as you say they are not real.
2. Family lists. Write -at at the top of a page and list every real word you can make by putting a letter in front. Try -og, -ug and -ake on other pages.
3. Finish my line. Make up two-line poems at dinner and leave the last word off: The soup is hot, I like it a... lot!
4. Rhyme hunt in a book. Read a rhyming picture book and pause before the rhyming word to let your child guess it.