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Rhyming is always such a fun literacy concept to practice in the kindergarten classroom. Many students have had experience with rhyming words in their favorite books, poems, and songs at home. So they’re always excited to practice rhyming at school! In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite rhyming activities for kindergarten. Your students will love these hands-on learning activities!
Even though rhyming can seem like a fun and simple concept to practice in kindergarten, it’s actually an important part of phonemic awareness. Rhyming requires students to listen for patterns in words by segmenting the onset and rime. When students can recognize and produce rhyming words, they are building an important literacy foundation that will help them with both reading and writing.
I wanted to share some of my favorite rhyming activities to use with young students. These hands-on learning activities are perfect for literacy centers, morning work, small group practice, or even as a supplement to your whole group instruction.
This fun game can be played with two students. Each child is given a crown mat and a set of rhyming pictures. Students will take turns looking away from the table while their partner places to rhyming picture cards on the crown, plus one card that doesn’t rhyme.
The student who looked away then finds the card that doesn’t belong with the other two. After identifying the non-rhyming word, it’s time to switch! The other student gets a turn to place cards on their crown mat while the partner looks away.
Another fun way to identify non-rhyming words is with a pocket chart activity. This activity is the perfect way to add some quick rhyming practice to your daily routine. You can place three picture cards in the pocket chart. Two of the words rhyme and one does not.
Then you can have students identify which word doesn’t rhyme. You can either have a student come up to the front to choose the card, or you can have students hold up a finger to vote for card number one, two, or three.
Your students can practice their fine motor skills as they assemble this rhyming flip book! Students start by coloring and cutting out a set of rhyming pictures.
Then they will glue a picture card to each flap and attach the corresponding rhyming word underneath. Students are always so excited to see the final product!
Pocket chart activities are perfect for adding some rhyming practice to circle time or even centers. Another fun pocket chart activity is to mix up the cards for two rhyming pairs and add them to the pocket chart. Students can then find the rhyming pairs and place the cards next to each other.
You can adjust the difficulty by adding more sets of rhyming words to the mix! You could also use these cards to set up a memory game on the table during small group practice or for a center activity.
As students become more familiar with producing rhyming words, they can create a rhyming word mini reader. Each page has a repeated sentence frame that ends with an underlined word.
Students will then complete the sentence frame at the bottom of the page with a word that rhymes with the underlined word. There is plenty of space for students to draw a picture that goes with each completed sentence!
If you’re looking for a way to incorporate more movement into the school day, this is the activity for you! For this rhyming word hunt, each student will have a blank recording sheet and one picture card. They will write the word for their picture card in the column labeled “My Word.”
Once everyone has written their word on the recording sheet, it’s time for them to start the rhyming word hunt! They will walk around the classroom until they find the student who has a picture card that rhymes with their word. Once they have found the correct picture card, they will write it in the “Rhyming Word” column next to their word. Students will then switch cards with someone else and play again!
This pocket chart activity helps students practice identifying rhyming words by finding a match for a given picture card. Simply add a row of picture cards to the pocket chart and then show students an additional card that matches one of the cards in the pocket chart.
You can invite a student to come up to the chart and identify the matching word or you can turn it into a group vote. Having the words written on the bottom of the cards will help students begin to make the connection between rhyming phonemes and letter patterns.
This activity helps students practice rhyming words within sentences. This is also a great way to practice reading sight words! Students will read the incomplete sentence at the top of the page, taking note of the underlined word. After finding the picture to match the underlined word, students will find the picture that rhymes.
Once students have found and attached both pictures to the page, they can complete and read the sentence. They will have fun reading their completed rhyming books!
You can find all of the rhyming activities pictured above in one easy-to-download resource. My printable rhyming activities are easy to prep and use for literacy centers, small groups, or any time your students could use some extra rhyming practice. If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
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These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
