What Rhymes with Santa?

rhyming songWhat rhymes with Santa?  Well, except for a fruit-flavored carbonated beverage, there aren’t any real words that clearly rhyme with Santa.  (If you think of one, please leave a comment below!)

The important thing to learn from this post is that rhyming words DO NOT have to be real words.  Playing with a name like Santa is a great way to introduce the concept of rhyme and to make it clear to parents and teachers that it is perfectly okay to use “silly words” or “nonsense words” when producing rhymes.

What could be more fun and motivating than 1) talking about Santa this time of year and 2) playing with the beginning sound of each child’s name?  Enter a silly song aptly named “Silly Name Game.”

“Santa, santa, now we’ll start with P.  Panta Panta, now we’ll start with W.  Wanta, Wanta…”  You get the idea.  It’s the super simple and highly repetitive lyrics that keep kids engaged and help them learn.

While this is a great introduction to rhyming and can be used with young children, it also a fabulous introduction to the skills of onset-rime blending and phoneme manipulation.
Phonological Awareness Continuum
The chorus of this song is as follows:
“Let’s play a silly name game, we’ll change the first sound of (Santa’s) name.  We’ll start by singing (Santa’s) name.  Always end the same.”

Insert your child’s name for the next verse:
“Let’s play a silly name game, we’ll change the first sound of (Sammie’s) name.  We’ll start by singing (Sammie’s) name.  Always end the same.  Sammie, Sammie, now we’ll start with Z.  Zammie, Zammie, now we’ll start with…”

For all readers of this blog post, I’m offering a free lead sheet for this song!  Simply click here and it should download automatically.

My long-term goal is to record all the songs in Alphabet Stew and Chocolate Too:  Songs for Developing Phonological Awareness, Literacy, and Communication Skills (available here), but for now I’m offering some free lead sheets to my music-reading followers.  If this is you, sign up in the right column and all new blog posts will be emailed directly to your inbox.

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