Activity: Take Children on Rhythm Walks

Rhythm is the most basic element of language. Early in life children enjoy manipulating sounds in a rhythmic manner. By 10 months they are engaging in multisyllabic utterances and reduplicated babble. Their experimentation with sound is delicious. All this is a precursor to a child’s delight in the rhythms and intonations found in nursery rhymes and other simple rhyming. It is an organic relationship as rhythm is always coursing in and through a young child’s body. Effective writers pay attention to the rhythm of their words as well as the message. 

Teachers and caregivers can help children discover that we are rhythm. Our eyes blink, our heart beats, we swallow, we finger tap, we breathe. We are veritable rhythm machines. And there is a whole world of rhythm beyond us. 

Once understanding that rhythm is a regular repeated pattern of sound and movement, walk around the room and enact some rhythmic activities. 

Example: flick a light on and off; sharpen a pencil; pretend to chew a carrot “crunch, crunch, crunch”

Now begin a rhythm walk and discover all the rhythm in that outside world. 

Watch a tree sway. “whish wosh, whis, wosh” . Listen to the car tires rhythmic whirl on the paved road “whiirrrr, whirr, whirr” or the toll of a church bell, “bing, bong, bing, bong, bing bong.  

Then make silly poems celebrating the rhythm:

Carrots crunch

crunch

crunch

in my mouth

becoming 

little orange chunks

to swallow

swallow

guu….ulp.