Rhymes are important for young children because:

• they help develop an ear for our language
• rhymes help children with phonemic awareness, phonemes are the smallest unit of sounds that make up words, gaining an awareness leads to reading and writing success 
• rhymes help children’s brains to differentiate between syllables
• rhymes help to identify similarities between words that rhyme or words that begin with the same sounds
• both rhyme and rhythm help children hear the sounds and syllables in words, which helps children learn to read