ABC Science Riddles

Ideas for Parents and Teachers

Creating riddles that rhyme is a wonderful way to explore words. As you engage children in this poetic process, you will see them blossom in their vocabulary and their word comprehension. You will help them develop reading, writing, thinking, and vocal resentation skills.Now encourage children to create more science riddles. Let them choose objects or processes they are curious about. Begin with letter and word clues.

• Start with a simple riddle such as this one for thunder:

  I'm seven letters long and I start with a T.

  When I roar and rumble, I'm loud as I can be.

   

• Stretch the exercise. Look up definitions in the dictionary. Find pictures of the subject. Add more rhyming lines with more clues to the riddle. End each riddle with a question, inviting others to answer the riddle.
• Share riddles! Most written riddles can be solved independently, but it's always more fun to try them out on other people. So, write down the riddles, perform the riddles, and see if others can figure them out.
• Instruct children to wait until all clues have been given before guessing the riddle. Have the child who guesses the answer first say the correct word, spell it out, then make up a new school riddle.
• As extended activities, encourage children to draw or sculpt the subjects of their riddles. Some may want to set their riddle to music.

Other children may want to create a series of riddles whose answers are clues to an even bigger mystery. For example, what do the answers to these riddles have in common?The fun is limited only by you and your children's imaginations. Have fun with them!