Few things light up a child’s face like a story with rhymes. Rhyming stories are catchy, fun, and easy to remember—making them a powerful tool for building phonological awareness, vocabulary, and early literacy skills. Whether you’re working with preschoolers or school-aged children, a good rhyme story can turn language learning into an engaging, musical experience.

In this post, we’ll explore why story rhymes are so effective in speech therapy and education. You’ll discover how rhyming supports sound awareness and language structure, find examples of great rhyming books to use in your sessions, and get tips for using rhythm and rhyme to boost learning outcomes. If you’re looking to make speech therapy more playful and productive, rhyme stories are a fantastic place to start.

Why are Story Rhymes so Effective in Speech Therapy

Using rhyme stories for speech and language therapy is like driving your car on cruise control.  The rhyme takes over the cadence, intonation, and length so we can focus on the content.  Communication requires expectation.  Someone says something, and we respond.  Someone asks a question that we then answer.  The rhyme naturally delivers this expectation through the rhymed syllable sound or word.

Rhyme stories can be as short and simple as Humpty Dumpty or as advanced as a full storybook poem like Room on a Broom.

Rhyme Stories are great for therapy because:

• You can find simple to complex rhymes to easily match even the most profound communication deficits.
• Many students have familiarity with rhymes.
• Story rhymes are present in all cultures.
• Rhymes easily enable the production of longer utterances by employing meter and relying on repetitious phrasing.
• There are many opportunities to use past, present, future, and even conditional tense.
• Rhythms present in the rhymes create natural opportunities for whole body and kinesthetic movements.
• Phonological syllable-building is aided by clapping or tapping the beat.
• Many story rhymes have moral or ethical themes embedded in their message.

How to use Rhyme Stories in Speech Therapy

The Gruffalo is a great example of the power of rhyme.  It is a full text story including location, characters, problems, and solutions. A mouse invents a monster to scare off other animals who want to eat him but winds up meeting an actual Gruffalo in the end.  Let’s use it as an example for what we can accomplish in speech therapy.

The Gruffalo / El Gruffalo

by Julia Donaldson

Rhyme Stories, Games, and Activities

Rhymes = action and most rhymes have been around for a long time.  Do an internet image search for YOUR BOOK + ACTIVITY and you will find a treasure trove of masks, games, songs, catapults, to adapt for therapy.  The sky is truly the limit.  For The Gruffalo, you can even go to www.Gruffalo.com!  Some of our favorites for the Gruffalo include:

• Anatomy charts for the Gruffalo’s amazing body parts.
• Lunch bag puppets to eat the animals with
• Animal story-sequencing activities
• Pantomime hand movements for each repeated rhyme:
  • terrible tusks
  • terrible claws
  • terrible teeth
  • in his terrible jaws.

Story with Rhymes for Speech Therapy

	Title	Description of Story
	Green Eggs and Ham   Huevos verdes con jamon	Plot: Sam-I-am persistently asks: “Do you like green eggs and ham?” through a traveling, rhyming story.   Why we like it:  This book as memorable and unmistakable characters and signature rhymes. Also helpful with reading goals.
	Chicka Chicka Boom Boom	Plot: 26 characters of the alphabet make their way to the top of a coconut tree before the tree bends from the weight.   Why we like it: The book adds familiar order using the alphabet to the rhyme which makes it easy to follow and memorize.  The children can relate to everyone wanted to join in on the fun but there being too many!
	Sheep in a Jeep	Plot: A flock of hapless sheep drive through the country in this rhyming picture book.   Why we like it:  Lots of action words and onomatopoeia.  High use of fricative sounds and kids love watching what all goes wrong when the sheep try to drive.
	I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More!	Plot:  A child paints the walls, then the ceiling, then himself before his mother comes in.   Why we like it.  This book rhymes to the tune of “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More.” It is a nice change of pace grammatically. Lots of opportunities to describe colors, do painting projects, and discuss behavior.
	Tanka Tanka Skunk!	Plot:  This a rhyming book about rhyming.  Skunk and Tanka use inventive words to create a beat on drums.   Why we like it: This book is really fun and uses made up words.  It helps for utterance expansion and kids love to tap the beat out on the table top so it helps with producing more syllables.
	Llama Llama Red Pajama   La llama llama rojo pijama	Plot:  Baby Llama turns bedtime into an all-out llama drama when he wants his mama.   Why we like it:  Good story with rhymes with ways to express wants and needs, deal with fears, and make requests.  Good use of plural words and initial /r/ words.
	Giraffes Can’t Dance   Las jirafas no pueden bailar	Plot:  Gerald the giraffe’s legs are too skinny and his neck is too long to be able to dance but then he gets up the courage.   Why we like it: It teaches acceptance of yourself and others and also teaches discovering unknown abilities. Great book for description, body parts, animal vocabulary, and self-esteem.
	Frog on a Log	Plot:  Cats sit on mats, hares sit on chairs, mules sit on stools, and frogs sit on logs. Each animal’s designated seat rhymes with that animal’s name. The cat explains: “It’s about doing the right thing.” The frog does not want to!   Why we like it:  Power to the little people for standing up for what they want! Great rhyming, sequencing, and categorization.
	The Gruffalo   El Gruffalo	Plot:  Mouse goes for a walk in a dangerous forest. To scare off his enemies he invents tales of a fantastical creature called the Gruffalo which turns out to be real.   Why we like it:  Great repetitive rhyme story.  Filled with almost all target sounds. Amazing description, forest and animal vocabulary.
	The Lorax     El Lorax	Plot:  The Lorax protects the planet from mindless progress. A timely message and a bonus that most kids know the plot from the movie.   Why we like it: Full of /r/, /l/, /s/ sounds and clusters.   Lots of questions and answers and opportunities to make prediction based on behavior.

Want to Get More Out of Your Speech Therapy? – Use Predictable Books

There are eight different types of predictable books as well as ways to use all the different types of predictable books with games. We can use these eight groups to categorize the books we read and get a better understanding of what each book has to offer.  These predictable categories also enable us to better define WHY our favorite books for speech therapy are successful, thus helping identify other book titles for future sessions.  Click on each story type to read more about each type of predictable books.

1. Justifying the Use of Speech Therapy Games with Literacy Research
2. Familiar Sequence Story: A common, recognizable theme such as the days of the week, the months, etc. Example: Today is Monday
3. Chain or Circular Story: The story’s ending leads back to the beginning. Example: Where the Wild Things Are
4. Cumulative Story: The story builds on a pattern. It starts with one person, place, thing, or event. Each time a new person, place, thing, or event is shown, all the previous ones are repeated. Example: There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
5. Question and Answer Book: A question is repeated throughout the story. Example: Brown Bear, Brown Bear
6. Repetition of Phrase Book:  A phrase or sentence is repeated. Example: Goodnight Moon
7. Rhyme Book: A rhyme, refrain, or rhythm is repeated throughout the story. Example: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
8. Song Book: Familiar songs with repeated phrases, sentences, rhymes, or refrains. Example: Five Little Monkeys
9. Pattern Story: The scenes or episodes are repeated with a variation. Example: Froggy Gets Dressed

Note that predictable themes are easier to identify with books written for younger children.  We often see more overlap of characteristics in different types of predictable books in stories written for older children, as they contain more story elements.

For loads more information about fun intervention strategies that incorporate books, be sure to check out our book, Literacy-Based Speech and Language Activities.

And if you want to earn CEUs and learn how to effectively learn how to use storybooks in intervention and make games, check out the Literacy-Based Everything Pack