Your toddler will love completing the verses as you read familiar rhymes from a favorite storybook! This activity encourages both phonological awareness and vocabulary growth. Exposing your toddler to rhyming verses and activities helps her to focus on the sound structure of language, which is important for supporting language and emerging literacy development.
- book of nursery rhymes
Step 1: Invite your toddler to share a favorite nursery rhyme book with you.
Step 2: Read a few nursery rhymes to your toddler several times so that she becomes familiar with them. As you read a verse, help your toddler make the connection between the words you are saying and the pictures on the page. For example, you might say:
Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. Here is the clock (point to the picture of the clock). Where is the mouse? That’s right! Here’s the mouse . . . running up the clock!
Step 3: After your toddler is familiar with a few of the rhymes, tell her that you are going to read a nursery rhyme and that you are going to point to a picture when you need help completing the verse. For example, you would say:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great ____________.
Pause and point to the picture of Humpty Dumpty falling off of the wall. Encourage your toddler to say: fall.
Step 4: Continue with other nursery rhymes that your toddler is familiar with. Encourage her participation by inviting her to fill in the verse as you read and point to the pictures.
