by Pamela Rice Hahn and Dennis E. Hensley, Ph.D.
Book excerpt:
Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours
Rhyme
Rhyme is a series of word endings that repeats the same, or similar, sounds.
Old Mother Hubbard went to her cupboard….
Rhymes can be used to add a whimsical, yet effective, touch to ad copy:
e.g.
You can always trust our milk, so buy some now.
The only stuff fresher is still in the cow.
If you’d enjoy playing a word game designed increase attention spans and improve the vocabulary in young children, take a look at “Task: Rhyme Time” from page 14 of Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours:
Task: Rhyme Time
Rhymes increase a child’s attention span because the child soon learns to listen for the repeated, familiar sound patterns. You can use this to your advantage if you have a youngster in the car with you during a long trip.
Example: Through the fog, the little green frog in a soggy wet bog jumped from log to log before the dog could hog all the grog.
Play a game to see how many rhyming words you can use in a sentence. This stuff is allowed to be fun, too. (Don’t forget to let the kid win!)
End note:
One of the sentences that survives from when I’d play that game with my daughter Lara is: Please don’t tease the fleas on my knees, you’ll make them sneeze and wheeze; just give them a cuddle, and give them a squeeze, and feed them some cheese.
Last week, I recited that sentence to my granddaughter — who just celebrated her fifth birthday in August. She listened to me say the sentence and remained silent for a minute, then said, “You left out trees.” So, we modified the sentence to: Please don’t tease the fleas on my knees, the breeze from the trees makes them sneeze and wheeze; just give them a cuddle, and give them a squeeze, and feed them some cheese.
Copyright © 2000 Pamela Rice Hahn
All Rights Reserved
You can read more about this book — expanded table of contents, introduction, author bio’s — on this Web site.
For more fun with rhymes, read The Ball That Started It All, also in The Blue Rose Bouquet.
No related posts.
Print This Post
This entry was posted
on Saturday, September 30th, 2000 at 12:31 am and is filed under Book Passage, Fall 2000.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Pammy, the main character in the 
Many of those 
Editor of The Blue Rose Bouquet since 1998 and a professional writer since 1984,