- chart paper
- marker
- seed
MA Standards:
Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.2.a: With guidance and support, recognize and produce rhyming words (e.g., identify words that rhyme with /cat/ such as /bat/ and /sat/).
Head Start Outcomes:
Literacy Knowledge/Phonological Awareness: Identifies and discriminates between sounds and phonemes in language, such as attention to beginning and ending sounds of words and recognition that different words begin or end with the same sound.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 8: Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.
Word Play: “A Seed Is Planted” Rhyme
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Concepts of Print, Phonological Awareness, Speaking and Listening, Vocabulary
Educator Prep: Copy the poem “A Seed Is Planted” on chart paper and display at children’s level.
Read aloud the poem ”A Seed Is Planted.” Then circle the word deep at the end of the second line and the word sleep at the end of the fourth line. Tell children that these two words are rhyme words. Say,
- They both sound the same at the end, /eep/. Have children say the words with you: deep, sleep.
- Tell children you are going to say some words. Explain that if you say a word that rhymes with deep, you want them to shine bright like the sun. (Demonstrate by putting on an exaggerated smile and fanning your arms over your head.) Say, If the word doesn’t rhyme with deep, I want you to pretend to go to sleep. (Demonstrate the action by tilting your head and laying your head on your hands.)
- Then say the word keep and have children shine bright like the sun. Repeat the process with words that rhyme with deep, such as leap, beep, and peep, and words that don’t rhyme with deep, such as bulb and seed.
A Seed Is Planted
A seed is planted
deep, deep, deep.
In the soil it
sleeps, sleeps, sleeps.
Yellow sunbeams
bright, bright, bright.
Raindrops falling
light, light, light.
Gentle breezes
blow, blow, blow.
The tiny seed begins to grow.
Adaptation: For children of varying ages, you may want to challenge older children to find other pairs of rhyming words in the poem (bright/light, grow/blow) and suggest two more words that rhyme with bright and grow.