Rhyming is an important part of early childhood education. It helps develop children’s reading skills in a fun and interactive way. It can also be a great way of learning new words concerning other words.
As a teacher or a parent, you know that it is not an easy task to keep your kids sitting for more than a few minutes. Kids have a lot of energy during the early years, and they can get bored petty quickly with dull reading tasks.
However, you can make things more interesting for them by involving them in fun rhyming activities, like the ones mentioned below!
Rhyming Activities for Kindergarten
Numerous games can help you teach rhyming. These games can combine different activities in one like exercise, writing, reading, learning about science, etc. You can follow these games, or you can take ideas and come up with your own activities.
This is a great game if your child is just starting with rhymes and doesn’t know many words.
The difficulty level of the game can be easily customized. Along with rhyming, it helps with memory and learning word families (words with the same suffix or prefix). You can start with small words. Print the words on paper and cut them into small flashcards. These cards can have just words or both the word and its picture if it is a noun.
After making the cards, take a few from the deck, like four or six to start with. You can add more when it looks like the kid is getting the hang of it.
Place the cards upside down in a grid fashion and have the kid turn over one card. The kid can say the word out loud and then turn over another word.
Now ask them if these two words rhyme. If not, turn over some other card. You can add the element of memory by having them remember which cards they have already turned over.
When they find the rhyming words, you can teach them the starting and ending sounds of the words. This way, they will start to recognize word families.
If you want to make your cards, you can, but TheKindergartenConnection.com has printable sheets for you to use as well.
This game is fun, colorful, and easy to do with the things you have available at home.
It is a very interactive game that also helps with motor skills. This activity will feel less like work and more like a game.
All you need is a paper, tape, push pins, elastic bands, and a marker or a pen. Compile a few different pairs of rhyming words and write one word from each pair on the left side and one word randomly on the right side of the paper. You should place this paper over a shoebox or some other box because you will be putting pins in it.
Next to each word, insert the push pins in. Make sure that they are secure and stable. You don’t want them flying out of the paper when you put the rubber bands around them. When you have placed the pins, you can start playing.
Ask the kid to read out the first word and match it to its rhyming word on the second list.
To match the words, they will put the rubber band around the pins of the two words. Make sure the rubbers are elastic enough that they can reach all words easily. This is a quick and fun activity that you can do without having to print or laminate anything.
If you give kids some object to play with instead of a paper and pen, they will certainly be more attentive and involved. This game involves the same principle of matching words but on a small box.
You can make the box out of cardboard. Then print some rhyming words, cut them into squares, and paste them on all six sides of the box.
If you want an easier game, you can print pictures instead of words or use pictures of objects along with the word. You can judge the difficulty level according to each child and make the game more complex over time.
Have the kid pick a word and find another box that has its rhyming match. They can place them together, sound the words out loud, learn their meanings, etc.
You can add different elements as you wish. You can enhance the children’s motor skills with this activity, too, by having them place the boxes in a stack or making some other shape with them.
It is always a fun idea to add something new and different to your learning activities related to the season.
This way, the activities will change throughout the year, and kids will stay interested in learning.
This Halloween poem is something you can do during the October and November months. Kids are already pumped up to go trick or treating and are excited to dress up. You can take advantage of that and teach them rhymes.
This activity involves simple sentences with the last word missing. The kids have to pick the right word from a list of words for each sentence. The sentences are Halloween-themed, and when you finish them, they make a poem. The last words of every two sentences will be rhyming words.
This way, you can teach the kids how to read and understand sentences and how to make simple poems and rhymes.
You should do this when your kids have already learned to rhyme, just words and images. This will take them a step further, and it can also help with creative thinking. You can ask them to make small rhymes themselves after completing this one.
To include a group of kids in a learning activity, you have to think of something other than writing and paper.
It should be something where all the kids interact with each other during the game. This helps build their social skills and makes them more confident. They should learn to speak easily in front of their class, and this is where the rhyming basket comes in.
This rhyming basket activity involves, as the name suggests, a basket. You take some objects from around the room or from your home and place them in the basket. Have kids stand in a circle and pass the basket around to each of them.
Every time you say a word, the kid with the basket will look through the objects to find one whose name rhymes with that word. Then the basket will be passed on.
The word you say doesn’t have to be meaningful. Just make sure that it rhymes with something in the basket. The kids can also say the object name they choose out loud.
To play this game, you don’t need any extra material, just the kids’ attention.
Through this game, you can teach kids not only rhyming words but also different body parts. This can be done with both big and small groups.
It can be played in different ways. You can also increase the syllables of the words with time. You will name a body part like ‘eye’ and ask the kids to name a word that rhymes with it. They can say something that sounds like ‘eye’ but isn’t a word. Encourage them to say a meaningful word. If they don’t know one, you can tell them. This way, they learn new words.
You can also say the body part and a word and ask them if they both rhyme or not. Ask them to look around the class to pick objects if they have difficulty coming up with a word. You can also point at the body part you are saying to familiarize them, like your toe, knee, etc.
For a change of pace, some exercise, and fresh air, you should consider including an outdoor learning activity in your teaching plan.
This activity will help build motor skills and is sure to keep kids interested. Just like the other games, you can adjust the difficulty level according to your child’s experience of rhyming words. Start with simple one-syllable words.
To play this game, you will need some hula hoops and paper plates. On the back of the plates, write rhyming words. If you want the game to go on longer, add lots of words. Take a few anchor words and place them on the ground inside hula hoops. Hide the rest in the garden or wherever you are playing.
The kids will pick one anchor word and search the ground for its rhyming words. Once they find them, they will place them with the right anchor word on the ground.
It is like hide and seek, and it is fun and engaging. You can find this game at HowWeLearn.com.
This game can be played in different ways but achieves the same result. You will need to print some rhyming words on cue cards. You can print them with pictures or just the words, depending on the difficulty level you want.
Place two words together and ask the kids if they rhyme or not. For a more interactive game, and if you are teaching a classroom full of students, you can ask them all to give a thumbs up if the words rhyme and a thumbs down if they don’t. You can also have cards for Yes and No.
The kids can just pick up the cards and place them next to the pair of words to tell if they rhyme.
However, this will be better if you are only teaching one kid.
The game is very simple and easy to learn. You will not need a lot of extra materials; it is easy enough to understand that the kids will not be confused.
Talking about teaching kids rhymes and not talking about Dr. Seuss is not possible. For this game, you will need a chart or a board.
Paste rhyming sentences on the chart with one word missing. Ask the kids to look through images of objects and place them with the right sentence or rhyme.
You can speak the rhymes out with the kids. You can make up your own rhymes or use some from ThisReadingMama.com.
In this game, the kids will not just read words, but they will also learn to make sentences and poems.
This is another seasonal game. It involves learning rhymes, counting, motor skill enhancement, and arts and craft. You will need to gather some stationary for this game. Gather some craft sticks, or if you don’t have those, you can use wooden spoons. These will make the snowman.
You will also need some white paint and a few other paint colors as per your choice. You can add more colors to your snowman as you wish. This can work as a good art activity. Other things you will need are cotton wool, craft foam, ribbon, and a basket.
Have the kids paint the snowman and add a scarf around it with ribbons. You can help out at this stage if you want. The basket you use should have holes in it to hold the snowman. Around the basket, you can add cotton wool for snow. You can also add a sun made of yellow craft foam. Add other objects to the scenery if your kids enjoy doing crafts.
Then recite the poem, “five little snowmen standing at the door, one snowman melted, and then there were four.” Every time a snowman melts, the kids will push down one stick. This way, they will learn to count down from five to one and learn some rhymes along the way.
This is not the only rhyme suitable for the activity. There are a couple of others that you can find on the internet, like five little monkeys jumping on a bed. For more details, check out KindergartenWorksheetsAndGames.com.
What Supplies Are Needed For These Activities?
To ensure that the kids have fun while learning, you have to put in some extra effort. All of these activities require some pre-planning and crafting. You should keep some essential things at hand, including scissors, paint, markers, glue, and tape.
Each activity has some special items other than these common ones, but these are the ones you cannot do without. You will need scissors to cut out cards and markers to write rhyming words if you are not printing them. If you want your cards to be durable, so you don’t have to keep making them all the time, you can also use a laminating machine.
Since these things are for kids’ use, lamination is a good idea, especially if you are making these for a classroom full of small kids. You can buy small lamination machines at very reasonable prices. You should also have some paint and colors, etc., and involve kids in the process of making cards and charts.
Conclusion
Many teachers have stressed the importance of learning rhymes in the early years. Rhymes help children learn how the language works and the sounds within words. It also helps improve their imagination. Once they get the hang of detecting pairs of rhyming words, teach them poems through which they can learn to write themselves.
People Also Ask
If you want to know more about rhymes and what they are all about, have a look at these common questions and answers.
What Does Rhyming Mean?
Rhyming means a word, a syllable, or a line that has a similar pronunciation, as another word, like dice and ice, eye and sigh, etc. Rhyming is used in poems.
Why is Rhyming Important in Phonemic Awareness?
A phenome is a unit of sound distinguishing words from one another. Phonemic awareness involves hearing, understanding, and manipulating different phonemes. This helps kids learn spellings.
Rhyming is important for phonemic awareness because when rhyming, you have to listen carefully to the sound of the word. When you do that, you recognize different sounds within the word to match them to words with similar sounds.
Hi, I'm Amanda! Welcome to Education Outside! Im passionate about educating young minds and helping parents/teachers by providing easy and effective teaching resources. Check out all of my teaching resources on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
