Rhyming Words helping Children Spell

When your child has problems with a spelling list, using rhyming words is often helpful way to make links with other words. Rhyming words can be a great spelling strategy.

I have experienced this with my son, when he was 7. His weekly spelling lists tend to revolve around a sound of the week, which can make learning the words easier - you would think? However each week my son would look at the list of words and mentally freeze and out would come the weekly "I can't learn these words, they're too hard!" In particular, one week his word list included might, night, sight, frightening,bright, light, right and height - he didn't see them in any way but a long, hard list of words.

To make it easier for him, I wrote them out on a separate piece of paper, like this:

1. might
2. night
3. sight
4. frightening
5. bright
6. light
7. right
8. height

When he looked at this sheet and how the words had a similar spelling, I saw the light turn on in his head. I could see that he realised he just needed to remember the spelling of the ight sound and then add the extra letters for each word.

Often when learning spelling it helps to remember the letter and sound patterns of words. These links or rhyming patterns can make it easier for children to remember and learn spelling words.

The Word Family Chart product helps the younger children be aware of rhyming words and letter/sound patterns. These are handy to have around a child's work/homework space.

Another useful product is the Word Family Sort - this is more of an activity that involves matching - very hands on.