9: Have fun with rhyming!

I’ve always loved rhyming! I remember writing silly poems and rhyming stories and plays when I was still at school. I like it when a rhyme takes a story or poem in an unexpected direction. My book Hairy Fairy was written in that way; the content of each section of the book is dictated by a word that rhymes with fairy, ie hairy, scary and wary.

A great way to get started with rhyming is to draw up a rhyming grid and go through the alphabet finding rhymes for your chosen word. Here’s a grid I’ve drawn up, with some words that have lots of rhymes:

There’s a printable version (with more space for writing!) here.

There are lots of extra challenges you can try once you’ve completed your grid (if you want to!)

• spot the homophones! These are the words that sound the same, but have different spellings, eg: be and bee or see and sea.

• use two of your rhyming words to write a rhyming couplet, eg:

Stings my knee.

• If you are feeling confident, why not use more of the words to write a longer poem?

It doesn’t matter how daft it is, just have fun!