Who Knew Rhyming Words Could Be So Funny?!
Let’s Find Some Rhyming Words!
“CLIT,” announces the five-year-old blonde girl with big blue eyes, sitting to my left!
I had just asked a group of five-year-olds for words that rhyme with “fit.” It started like a normal lesson on rhyming words: bit, lit, mit, sit, and then… shit. (There’s always one. I ignored it, so his friend chimed in too. I mean, they weren’t wrong — it does rhyme!)
Then it happened. The cutest, sweetest-looking girl, hand held high in the air, says it: “CLIT.” Again, she wasn’t wrong, so I moved right along, not daring to ask her to put it in a sentence.
Teaching rhyming words to kids is always an adventure. You get the innocent answers, the hilarious ones, and sometimes the downright obscene ones!
The day before, I had ten-year-olds working on rhymes. One word was ‘auditory.’ Walking around the class, checking their work, I spotted a peculiar answer: “imperial Japanese morning glory.” Whatever happened to ‘story’ or simply ‘glory’? It’s pretty easy to spot the kids who go straight to Google instead of using their brains!
But the pièce de résistance came from the same class. Words that rhyme with ‘feet’? One student’s answer: “gleet.”
I told him it wasn’t a word and asked him what it meant. Obviously, he couldn’t answer that. However, in that moment, I pulled out my phone to check it.
He kept insisting, “The internet said it was a word.”
Trying not to laugh, I looked it up and politely told him to find another word.
Gleet: a watery discharge from the urethra caused by a gonorrheal infection.
Ah, the joys of teaching!
