Home > Activities > 4-5 years
Changing the words to a favourite nursery rhyme is a fun way for your child to experiment with new words.
Choose a favourite tune and let your little one's imagination run wild like the families in the video below.
The benefits of making up rhymes
- It helps children think imaginatively.
- Changing the words can get children thinking about word sounds and rhymes.
- Listening out for the rhymes helps children identify sounds that are similar and sounds that are different - this fine tunes the listening ready for 鈥榣iteracy鈥.
- It allows children to practise putting words they know into new contexts and reinforce their meanings.
Making up rhymes together
Certain rhymes like 'The Wheels on the Bus' are quite easy to make up new rhymes for. Try asking your child what the different people on the bus might be doing.
Ask your child questions like 'What's your favourite food?', when they answer you could try and fit this into a rhyme.
As you sing rhymes, stop and ask children what rhymes with the right word in the line. For example, you might sing 'Twinkle, twinkle little star鈥' then ask them 'What rhymes with star?' and then see if you can fit what they say back into a new line. Thinking about rhymes tests their knowledge of word sounds, which is essential for learning to read and write later on.
There are plenty of made up rhymes for inspiration in our nursery rhymes collection.
