3.29.2011

Rhyme Time - writercize #14

There was a writer who loved to rhyme
to hear a lyric and keep the time.
Right on the beat the words did roll
and touched the reader's very soul.

Perhaps not the most illuminating poem, but a decent example of how by simply using words that rhyme, a thought or idea adopts its own rhythm and beat and sounds like waves, even when reading it to yourself silently.

Rhyming has been used in nursery rhymes (aha!), songs and children's stories as a tool to teach language and important skills and make learning fun and memorable before most citizens were even literate. 

Think of all the nursery rhymes used to teach counting ("One, Two, Buckle My Shoe"), colors ("Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"), life lessons such as the necessity of going to sleep early ("Wee Willie Winkie"), telling time ("Hickory Dickory Dock" and "Monday's Child"), hygiene and more.

When I need to remember how many days there are in any given month, I still resort to "30 days hath September ..." rather than committing the number of days in each month to memory. 

According to Scholastic: "The ability to hear rhymes — knowing that cat rhymes with hat, but not with bag — is an essential skill for learning to read because it means that your child can discern the differences among individual sounds (or phonemes). Playing with rhymes trains her ear to hear the differences and similarities in how words sound."

writing exercise:  Easy peasy exercise today.  Think of one word to rhyme with each of the words below.  If you're feeling adventurous, feel free to elaborate and make a little poem, or series of couplets - I'd love to read it!
  • book
  • sky
  • road
  • vine
  • pen

(Click "read more" for writercizer sample response.)

writercizer response:

book:  nook
sky:  guy
road:  toad
vine:  line
pen:  when

Take a look, it's in a book ... ok, not me - that's the start of a song from a lovely program I used to watch called Reading Rainbow ... you see the stickiness of rhymes?!?

Falling fast from the sky
was a scared little guy.
He just hoped to be alive
after his first sky-dive.

In the middle of the road
there lived a squat little toad.
Along came a car
and he leapt far
o'er to the grass freshly mowed.

I haven't lifted a pen
since I don't even know when!

3 comments:

  1. book - nook
    sky - fly
    road - goad
    vine - fine
    pen - glen

    I am terrible at poetry! I find myself telling this to a lot of people lately :) I do enjoy reading it though!

    I always look forward to reading your responses to the writing exercises! I haven't checked out your response to the deserted island exercise yet because I'm still mulling it over. It's an excellent exercise to get in your character's head and so I've been thinking from her point of view on it. I hope I can share it with you soon.

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  2. book - crook
    sky - buy
    road - toad
    vine - whine
    pen - ten

    I miss writing poetry. Haven't done it in so long. Thanks for this writercize, alana!

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  3. Thanks for the responses ladies!

    ReplyDelete

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