Rhyming is a phonological awareness skill that is first taught through nursery rhymes and songs. Children can hear the rhyme, rhythm, and repetition in those preschool songs, and unknowingly they start understanding how rhyming words work. Once they get to Kindergarten, they should have some kind of understanding of rhyming words, but will still need more practice. If they were not exposed to nursery rhymes and songs, this key piece of reading is missing. When students lack these phonological awareness skills, they have a harder time with phonemic awareness, and they end up struggling with reading fluency. Today, I am sharing 12 of my favorite rhyming activities for Kindergarten that you can add to your lesson plan.

Rhyming Skill #1: Identifying Rhyming Pairs

The first skill included in rhyming is identifying a rhyming pair. Students should be able to hear two words and tell if they rhyme or not. For example, if you said, “Does nap and cap rhyme?” they would say “yes”. Or if you said, “Does not and net rhyme?” they should say “no”.

Here are five of my favorite activities to practice identifying rhyming pairs:

Lesson Introduction Activity: Rhyming Songs

Singing is an excellent way to engage kindergartners, especially when you use it at the start of a lesson! Introduce them to songs and chants that incorporate rhyming words. Classics like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” can be a fun way to learn about rhymes and rhythm. Encourage your child to listen to these songs and pay special attention to the rhyming words. You can also create your own rhyming songs or rhyming games to further practice this skill.

You can find my favorite rhyming songs here: Rhyming Songs List on YouTube

Whole Group or Center Activity: Rhyming Pairs Sort

Using a pocket chart, board, or table, display the “YES” and “NO” cards. Students will pick a card, look at the two pictures, and decide if the words rhyme or do not. To engage your whole class, have all the students give a thumbs up (if it rhymes) or a thumbs down (if it does not rhyme), then have the student sort it. This could also be used as a center activity.

Whole Group Activity: Find rhyming pairs in a rhyming book

Reading a rhyming book is a simple activity that you can use in your phonics whole group lesson! As you are reading, ask for students to be rhyming detectives and listen for rhyming pairs. You can write them down on an anchor chart or whiteboard. Revisit the different rhymes and see if your students can think of more words that rhyme!

Need some rhyming book suggestions? Check out this list here: Rhyming Read Alouds for Kindergarten

Center Activity: Rhyming Clip Cards

Students will pick up a card and say the name of the big picture. Then, they will look at the three other pictures, they will pick the correct rhyming pair using a paper clip or clothespin.

Independent Work: Cut and Paste Picture Sort

Have your students cut out the pictures and glue them underneath the matching rhyming word. To challenge your students, have them write the word underneath or next to each picture.

Skill #2: Produce a Rhyming Word

This second rhyming skill is more complex than the first. To produce a rhyming word, students are given a word and have to say another word that rhymes. For example, if you said “Tell me a word that rhymes with dog”, they should be able to come up with “log” or “jog”.

Here are four of my favorite activities to practice producing a rhyming word:

Whole Group Activity: Turn and Share with a Partner

A simple, no-prep rhyming activity for your lesson is using partners to practice producing a rhyming word. Have your students turn to a partner or someone sitting next to them. The teacher says a word, like “bat”, then identifies the student who goes first, ie: “the student with the longest hair goes first”. The first student will name a word that rhymes with bat. Then, their partner would name another word that rhymes with bat. Continue playing until they cannot think of another word. They can put their hands up once they are done. You can call on a few students to share some words they came up with to write on the board.

Whole Group Game: Hot Potato Rhyming Game

Have your students sit in a circle and place these picture cards in a basket, face down. Play some music and have them start passing the basket around. Once the music stops, whoever has the basket takes a card out and names the picture, then says another rhyming word.

Center Activity: Rocket Rhyming Game

Place all cards face down in a pile. Taking turns, each student picks up a card. They look at the picture, say the word, and then have to say another word that rhymes. If they can think of a word, then they keep the card. If they pull a “rocket” they must put all their cards back.

Independent Work: Color, Paste, Draw

Students will cut out the pictures and glue them next to the matching rhyming word. Then, they must draw a picture of another word that rhymes.

Skill #3: Word Families

After children can rhyme, the next step is to focus on word families. A word family is the vowel-consonant (or vowel-consonant-consonant) ending of a word, like -at or -in. This skill helps them build their reading fluency because they recognize the word family to sound out the word.

Here are three of my favorite activities to practice word families:

Whole Group Activity: Tree Map Anchor Chart

To focus on word families by short vowel sound, create a tree map anchor chart for each vowel. Do one or two-word families a day, having students think of words that can be added underneath.

Center Activity: Word Family Memory Match

Using a pocket chart or table, place all cards face down. Students will pick up two cards- if it is a word family and it is matching picture, students get to keep the pair! If not, they have to put it back. To challenge students, have them say an additional rhyming word.

Independent Work: Word Family Book

Have students think of 4-6 words that belong to each word family and write them down. Then, they can draw a picture or one or more of those words. These would be very handy to refer back to.

Ready-to-Go Resources to Help Teach Rhyming and Word Families

If you are looking for more ideas on how to teach rhyming, you can find all the ideas above plus more included in the SFK Phonics Curriculum Rhyming or Short Vowel Word Family Unit. Just click on the link below to see more.

Rhyming Unit

Try a FREE sample activity from the Rhyming Unit here!

Short Vowel Word Family Unit

Browse ALL Rhyming Resources here

I hope you found this post helpful as you plan rhyming activities and games for your Kindergarten students!