3 Quick Rhyming Activities to Master Phonological Awareness [K-1]

In this blog post, I’m going to share some quick and easy rhyming activities you can do with your kindergarten and first-grade students to help promote their phonological awareness.

Before we dive in, if you’d prefer to watch and listen to all this same content, you can check out my YouTube video below!

Otherwise, just keep scrolling for the activities!

Why Rhyming Matters for Reading Readiness

I first want to quickly mention that rhyming is a crucial phonological awareness skill. This is a meta-cognitive skill where students are actively listening to different words to identify if they rhyme. When we practice rhyming, we want students to master two things:

1. Identification: Can they say “yes” or “no” if two words rhyme?
2. Generation: Can they create their own rhyming words?

The bottom line is there’s no downside to teaching rhyming—it will absolutely benefit students’ readiness to read and develop their phonological awareness! That said, if a student struggles with rhyming, that is not an indicator that they will struggle with reading. So let’s not over-emphasize mastery before moving on to other phonological and phonemic awareness skills.

---

Activity 1: Rhyming Picture Card Games (Mix & Match, Memory)

The first, super-easy way to have students practice identifying rhymes is by using some rhyming picture cards. With these cards, there are a few simple ways I like to use them:

• Mix and Match: Each student gets one picture card. They identify the word shown. Then, everyone stands up, mixes around the room, and tries to find their rhyming match!
• Memory Game: If you’re playing in person, simply have students cut out and flip over the cards. They take turns flipping two cards, saying the words aloud, and identifying if they rhyme. If they rhyme, they keep the pair and go again! Teaching virtually? I actually shared a free digital memory game that makes it easy to plug in different words and pictures. You can grab that freebie below!
• Small Group “Picker” Fun: Cut up the cards, put them in a bag, and mix them up. I like to either have students take turns pulling out two cards to identify if they rhyme, OR have one student be “the picker.” The picker chooses two cards, says them aloud, and the rest of the group gives a thumbs up (yes, they rhyme) or a thumbs down (no, they don’t). I love this last option because it involves everyone in the small group at one time!

Activity 2: Read Poems and Nursery Rhymes Often

It is so important for students to hear rhymes within text often and repeatedly!

Not only would I read rhyming texts aloud, but in my classroom, we also had poetry folders. Whenever we introduced a new poem, students would listen to me read it, echo read it, choral read it—they would’ve read that same rhyming poem 5-6 different times by the end of the week. This is an incredible way to hear and read the rhymes.

I always used my phonics poems, and while the main skill was to identify the phonics patterns, my poems always rhymed! More often than not, the rhyming words were the ones with the phonics pattern in them.

Get a free phonics poem to try out in your classroom:

Want 79 Phonics Poems, each practicing a different phonics skill? Check out my full Decodable Phonics Poetry Resource:

Or grab it on TPT!

Use Rhyming Picture Books

You can incorporate any rhyming books you enjoy. One of my favorites is Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andrae. I like to:

1. Chart and Clap: Copy a page or two onto chart paper. As students listen to the passage being read aloud, they can clap, jump, or snap when they hear the rhyming words.
2. Generate the Missing Word: Once we’ve read the passage a few times, I cover up some of the rhyming words. When we read it aloud, students have to generate that missing word. Some will do it from memory, but others will recognize that it needs to rhyme with the previous word. It gets them thinking about what word fits that description!

---

Activity 3: The “Which Word Doesn’t Belong?” Discrimination Game

This type of activity can be a little trickier, but it’s fantastic for pushing your students’ listening skills. Here, they won’t just listen to two words; instead, they will listen to three different words and need to identify which two rhyme.

This activity is great for clarifying a common misconception. Often, teachers say, “two words rhyme if they have the same ending.” To help students see past this, I would choose two rhyming words and one that shares the same ending letter, and write them on the board:

Example: cat, mat, part

When students look at the words, they can notice that all three words end in /t/, but only cat and mat rhyme because they have that same ending sound of /at/.

How to Play:

1. Say three words (e.g., top, mop, clap).
2. Students find the word that doesn’t belong.
3. For a challenge, have students then generate a new word that rhymes with the “misfit” word!

So there you have it—three fun rhyming activities you can do with your students to help them with their phonological awareness!

Pin to save these activities: