Our free sorting mats will help your kindergarten students practice their rhyming skills. Kids will enjoy this simple rhyming activity for kindergarten and first grade students – they will become word detectives! It is a great way to develop phonological awareness!
Rhyming Activity For Kindergarten
Do you remember kindergarten? Do you remember all the fun, rhyming books that your teacher would read to you? Or, how about the rhyming songs that the teacher would invite you to sing? Did you know that these rhyming activities and books were an important part of learning to read as a child? This Rhyming Activity For Kindergarten is a fun way to help kindergartners to work on reading readiness.
Start by scrolling to the bottom of the post, under the terms of use, and click on the text link that says >> Download <<. The pdf file will open in a new window for you to save the freebie and print the template of the rhyming printables.
What is rhyming?
The definition of rhyming is “the correspondence of sounds at the ends of words or phrases.” This is especially true when it involves the ending of the word. Here are a couple of examples of this:
- Flower / Power
- Cold / Behold
- Cat / Hat
Why is rhyming important in learning to read?
There are a number of reasons: Rhyming
- Helps kids with phonemic awareness.
- Forms a strong foundation for reading.
- Gives kids the opportunity to see how words break down into smaller parts. This is an important skill in reading.
- Allows young learners to explore language and teaches them about word families.
- Helps kids to learn how to make predictions in their reading
How do you introduce rhyming words to kindergarten students?
Explain it
Start by explaining that rhyming words are words that have the same ending sounds.
Then give simple examples
- cat and hat
- bat and rat
- car and bar
- dog and frog
- hand and band
Short CVC (consonant, vowel consonant) words are the best way to start. They are perfect for early readers.
Sing it
Singing is the prefect rhyming activity and kids love to sing along! What they don’t realise is that they are learning all about rhyming patterns. Don’t you love learning that happens without kids even realizing it?
Here are some fun songs
Down By The Bay
Five Green and Speckled Frogs
Five Little Monkeys
Willoby Wallaby Woo
My Aunt Came Back
Read it
We should be reading to kids every day already, right? When trying to teach kids about rhyming, it is good to add in some fun rhyming books into the mix. There are so many fun rhyming books to choose from. Kids love stories and quickly pick up the rhyming patterns.
Emphasizing the rhyming words as you read. Another trick is to pause before reading a rhyme word, so the children can fill it in for you.
Mix it up
Try to incorporate rhyming activities into your daily routines. For instance, create a counting rhyme to help kids improve their number knowledge. For example, “1-2-3, look at me!” or “1-2, I see you.” You’ll find the kids will soon start to recognize the patterns.
Make it Up
Kindergarten aged kids are silly. Embrace it! Make up silly, fake words and have the kids find a “regular” word that rhymes with it. It will make them giggle and keep them having fun and wanting to rhyme more.
Use Rhyming Activity Centers
Most children this age love games and activities. We can take advantage of this in our rhyming activity centers. Providing a wide variety of different activities will give our students an opportunity to practice rhyming in an engaging way. They won’t even realize they are working!
Free Printable Rhyming Activity
We’ve created an easy game that you can print and have on hand. It is perfect for a rhyming center, but you could also direct parents to this post, so they can make their own game. The best part? We’ve made it editable, so you can add your own rhyming clip art and words.
How to edit the pdf.
Make sure you have KG penmanship installed. You can download this font for free here. Install it BEFORE opening the PDF. Click in the blue form fields and add your words. Please note that the font will automatically adjust in size.
You will need some clip art to edit the pictures. We usually purchase our clip art from Teachers Pay Teachers. Search for “rhyming words clip art.” Purchase the art and download it to your computer. It is usually has to be extracted from the zip file. Click on the image icon and a dialogue box will come up and allow you to choose the clip art. T
Easy To Prepare
- Download the file.
- Edit the pictures and word bank if you wish.
- Print onto cardstock and laminate for durability.
- Cut out the sorting mats and the rhyming cards.
- Print the recording sheet onto copy paper.
How To Use
- Give each child a rhyming mat, a recording sheet, and a pile of rhyming cards.
- Direct students to look through the cards and find a rhyming pair to place on their mat.
- They print the two rhyming words on their recording sheet, place the pair of cards to one side and find another rhyming pair.
- Repeat until the recording sheet is full.
Rhyming Activities
- Rainbow Rhyming Words Puzzles
- Camera Strips Rhyming word families
- Lion Rhyming Words Activities
- Cooking up Rhymes Do a Dot Printables
- Butterfly Rhyming Games
- Rhyming Clip Cards
- Printable Strawberry Themed Rhyming Cards
- Robot Rhyme Puzzle Game
- Winter Rhyming Puzzles
- Smores Rhyming Games for Preschoolers
- Beehive Rhyming Games for Preschool
- Lots of free rhyming activities for kids
- Sneak in some practice this fall with these Pumpkin Rhyming Words
- Practice rhyming with these fun Valentines cut and paste printables
- Rhyme in December with these Gingerbread Rhyming Puzzles
Your Turn
How do you practice Rhyming with your students? What are their rhyming favorite activities? Please leave a comment below.
Rhyming Activity for Kindergarteners
By downloading from my site you agree to the following:
- This is for personal and personal classroom use only (to share please direct others to this post to download their own set!)
- This may NOT be sold, hosted, reproduced, or stored on any other site (including blog, Facebook, Dropbox, etc.)
- All downloaded materials provided are copyright protected. Please see Terms of Use.
- Graphics Purchased and used with permission
- I offer free printables to bless my readers AND to provide for my family. Your frequent visits to my blog & support purchasing through affiliates links and ads keep the lights on so to speak. Thanks you!