In children’s songs and poems, rhymes play an important role in preparing children for reading instruction. In fact, the amount and quality of rhymes children are exposed to in the preschool years is one of the four strongest predictors of children's success in learning to read. As the brain is organizing itself to learn language, repeated rhymes and wordplay help children focus on small elements in the language stream. In particular, playing with rhyme and rhythm helps children develop phonological awareness—the ability to hear and pay attention to the sounds and rhythms of speech. When children listen to simple poems, songs, and nursery rhymes, they begin to pay attention to the sounds in words above and beyond the words' meanings. This kind of play reinforces the concept of "word" and tunes a child's ear to differences and similarities in how words sound.

Children who are familiar with nursery rhymes when they enter kindergarten often have an easier time learning to read. This may be simply because children who know nursery rhymes have been read to more often than those who don't, but it is probably also because the rhymes themselves help children discover many common word patterns and notice how their sounds vary at the beginning. "A Fellow Named Sig," with its strong rhythm and obvious rhyme, presents the words "Sig," "pig," and "jig" on screen. In fact, the limerick explains and demonstrates just how to make a rhyme—by replacing the first letter of a word with another letter. Being able to hear and identify rhymes—to know that "pig" rhymes with "jig"—is an essential skill for learning to read because it means that children are able to distinguish among the sounds in words (phonemes). This in turn will help them make the association between letters and the sounds they represent.

Children who have trouble with rhyming in the preschool years are likely to have more difficulty than others in making this kind of association later on. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to call attention to the sound structure of language. Teachers can boost the phonological processing system with large doses of wordplay: rhymes and poems, word comparisons, alliteration, and syllable and phoneme exercises that require segmentation and blending. For example, introducing songs and games that combine rhyming with rhythmic clapping or movement, (e.g., "Pat-a-Cake" or "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear") is a good way to begin. Traditional nursery rhymes and songs that emphasize rhyming words (e.g., "Miss Mary Mack," "A Hunting We Will Go," "Willaby, Wallaby, Woo") tend to spark young children’s awareness of language patterns and sounds.

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