Rhyme and Rhythm

1Read and enjoy: The Little Breeze

• A little breeze came through the trees,
• It danced among the leaves with ease.
• It whispered softly to the flowers,
• And played with them for hours and hours.
• It rocked the nest up on the bough,
• And cooled the farmer and his cow.
• Then off it flew across the hill,
• And everything was calm and still.

breeze: a light, gentle wind (මඳ සුළඟ). bough: a big branch of a tree (අත්ත).

2Rhyming words

Words that have similar ending sounds are called rhyming words. In many poems they come at the end of the lines.

• breeze / trees / ease
• flowers / hours
• bough / cow
• hill / still

3Rhythm

Clap your hands or tap your feet while you read the poem aloud. You can feel a musical beat. That beat is called rhythm (තාලය).

Rhyme and rhythm make a poem easy to remember and fun to recite with friends.

Recite with your class: one group reads the first line, the next group reads the second line, and so on.

4Make your own bag of rhymes

• sun / fun / run / one
• tree / bee / sea / free
• sky / high / fly / by
• cat / hat / mat / bat
• day / play / away / grey
• show / go / snow / grow

Remember: rhyming depends on sound, not spelling. "one" rhymes with "sun", and "grey" rhymes with "day".