Children's Rhymes

Remember the good old days when you used to recite children's rhymes with your school buddies?

Elements of Children's Rhyme

Characters: Characters in these stories ranges from humans, animals, imagined creatures, and made alive inanimate objects.

History: Rhyming poems and songs are typically passed down from generations through oral storytelling. In contemporary times, these poems and songs are recorded down and still very popular with children and adults. Often rhyming poems and songs were used as educational tools for children. Although some rhymes would not exactly qualify as children themes today i.e. “Ring Around the Rosie” was about the Black Plague.

Keys

• Tail Rhyme: possibly the most popular type of rhyme. With two lines, the ends of each line rhymes with each other. These are probably easier to work with when writing your rhyme. Ex:

  Today I will run,
  Tomorrow I will have fun.

  
  
• Internal Rhyme: sometimes rhymes are made through one line. These rhymes are also easy and fun to make. Ex:

  For that day, I loved him not, but dear me, he’s all I’ve got.

  
  
• Many rhymes use words playfully and have sort of an “Old English”/dramatic run to it. They sometimes uses require the reader to think or imagine to understand.



• Children's rhymes often include personifications such as the Moon as a character that speaks and sings. You can take advantage of this and turn normal objects into characters.



• Common rhyme themes involve domestic settings (kitchen, garden), or the sky (moon, stars, sun, rain), farm settings and animals.



• There are many repeats in lines or tongue twisters, i.e. “Twinkle twinkle little star” or “She Sells Seashells”



• Many nursery rhymes tend to write cheerfully about a subject even if the story is tragic. In such a case, the writer either takes on a careless, slight sympathetic role or jokes at the tragedy. (“Ding, Dong, Bell” – calls a boy naughty for killing mice and trying to drown a cat in the well.)

Writer's Block