The habit of reading is one that should be started even when the child is still inside the mother’s womb. The book of all books, the Bible is an excellent source of stories to share to your little ones. After realizing that our children know Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse more than they know Jesus, we decided to make it a personal mission to read Bible stories to our kids. But that doesn’t always come easy. Because if you read stories straight from the Bible, sentence structure is meant for adult readers; not the type that toddlers would like. And…there are no pictures. We needed books of Bible stories written with rhyme words. Along came, The Rhyme Bible: Storybook for Little Ones.
If you’ve been following this blog and the book reviews we do, you know that we’ve been receiving Christian storybooks on the Bible. The Rhyme Bible: Storybook for Little Ones is the first one though that my kids actually picked up. I told them I’ll read it to them since we only have one copy and I didn’t want them fighting over it.
So what’s with rhymes and children?
Rhymes helps children learn how to read.
That’s one thing I learned from studying language and literacy education in graduate school and then applying these learnings to my two-year-old twins.
How is that so?
By using rhymes words such as “cat” and “mat”, children are able to detect the word segment”at” which is common between the two words. Children become aware that these words have common sounds.
Dr. Usha Goswami, the director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education at St. John’s College, Cambridge and professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge noted that awareness of the fact that certain words share similar sound segments (e.g. cat, mat, fat) helps prepare children to learn that these words also have common spelling sequences.
This, in turn, aids them in their early reading journey.
Bookstart, a UK-based early childhood education program, emphasized these points: “A child that has learnt this characteristic of rhyme is therefore likely to be well equipped to learn how certain spellings produce similar-sounding words once they start school. Experience suggests that when they begin to learn reading, children that are sensitive to rhyme are better able to make the inference, for example, that fight and might are likely to be spelt the same way as the word light. In this way, learning to read one new word is readily extended to learning several more. Singing rhymes at the toddler stage therefore provides a strong foundation for learning to read slightly later on.”
In short, good rhymers make good readers!
Written by Linda Sattgast and illustrated by Laurence Cleyet-Merle, The Rhyme Bible: Storybook for Little Ones uses simple words and harnesses the power of rhymes in bringing out an enjoyable reading experience for children and parents. It’s a good starter book to introduce Bible characters and stories to children.
I particularly like how the story of Jonah was written. A parent can do a lot of creative strategies during storytime. For example, take these lines:
God said: “Go, go, go!”
But Jonah said: “No, no, no!”
My two-year-old twins enjoyed it very much that they asked their Dad to read the entire book to them the second time. I read it too to our three-month-old baby who was wide-eyed and flashed his adorable smile when I read the stories to him.
By the way, don’t get confused. The book was previously named as The Rhyme Bible: Storybook for Toddlers. I guess they changed toddlers to little ones to make it more encompassing and not only limit to the technical term “toddlers”, which, by definitions, are children aged one to three years old.
It’s neither too early nor too late to introduce Jesus in the lives of our children – and what better way to do that by reading stories of God’s love and miracles to them.
Get this book and start reading!
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book from the Booklook Bloggers program in exchange for honest review. I was not required to write positive reviews. Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
