Fun Activities for Teaching Rhyming Words

Rhyming Words are group of words that sound similar. Rhyming words are used in a poem, play or fiction to bring a melody that one can easily remember and recite, e.g. Cat and Hat, hip and dip, told and hold, etc. These above words possess similar ending sounds. Such group of words are called 'Rhyming Words'.

Children are more receptive, if their study lessons are made easy and interesting to learn. Teaching children rhyming words is not an easy task. Thus, teachers can follow some interesting activities and games in their class. Teaching rhyming words is advantageous in improving speech communications, like understanding phonic, syllable and words, stress and music. Teaching rhyming words include, writing activities which will also help children gain knowledge to write correct words and spellings, building vocabulary and word power. If you add brainstorming activities too, like riddles, story telling, puzzles and assignments, it will enhance both learning and teaching methods.

Fun Activities for Teaching Rhyming Words

Coloring Squares
Draw a table of different boxes on the blackboard, each box containing a word. One thing to remember is that each written word must have at least one word of similar sound, anywhere in the table. Ask the children to color the rhyming words with their favorite color, but note that both words should be marked with the same color.
For example - Assume a table of 3 rows and 6 columns, with each cell containing 1 word.

man	map	mat	lip	log	did
dog	cat	sip	cap	hot	can
hid	cot	hat	sit	can	lap

Rhyming Words Competition
Form 3 groups and assign a name to each. One can either conduct activities like search rhyming words from a text or can give the children some words and ask them to find out rhyming words from the same. The group that searches for more rhyming words should be declared the winner and of course they should be getting small prizes like chocolates, etc. to motivate them further.

Here are some examples of rhyming words with their common sounds:

• Oil - spoil, toil, broil, soil
• Ant - ant,chant, grant, scant, pant
• Oon - moon, soon, afternoon
• Ot - shot, sought, cot, lot
• At - at, bat, cat, rat, mat, hat, sat, gat, tat, that, pat etc.

Here is another example:

A Poem with Rhyming Words

Somebody's Mother
'If ever she's poor and old and gray,
When her own dear boy is far away.'

And "somebody's mother" bowed low her head
In her home that night, and the prayer she said

Was, 'God be kind to the noble boy,
Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy!" - Mary Dow Brine

You can begin reciting the above poem loudly and ask the children to follow you. In the second stage, teach the children to recite the poem themselves, at least once. Give them an exercise to pen down the rhyming words from the poem in a duration of 5 minutes. Then you can start with the brainstorming activities.

Ask them to locate -
Words ending with words - 'ay','ad' and 'oy'
Words ending with word - 'r'
Find the matching consonants and vowels from the poem - om.
('om' in the words - home and some)

Rhyme Round
Assemble all the children together and form a circle. All have to stand and pass a ball to each other, in sequence. You can play some music. When the music stops, the first child holding the ball is excluded from the game, and has to mention a word followed with a rhyming word. The next child has the provide another rhyming word. While playing the game you could give them hints on searching rhyming words or else after the game.

Riddles
Here you can gather various pictures of animals, flowers and birds. Give children an example like 'Jack and Jill, went up the hill', etc. before you start the riddles. Group them into two. Ask them riddles one by one. The group that scores high by answering the riddles faster, wins the riddle activity/quiz. You can make the riddle activity more enjoyable by asking the loser group to come up with a poem or riddle with the same rhymes.

Example of a riddle:
Underneath my windowsill,
grows the prettiest yellow ........ (answer is daffodil)

If the children do not find the answer, you can show them the pictures of a daffodil that is suitable answer to the above riddle. You can give the children an exercise, as a homework, to come along with their paintings that will be the answer for the riddle that they plan to present in the next class.

Later on, you can introduce them word families that include rhyming scheme, rhyming stanzas and homophones. When the children understand the basics of rhyming words, you can teach children how some words have same pronunciation but different spellings, such as - sight, site, right, rite. The words, which are pronounced similarly, with different spellings are called homophone. Homophone is one of the types of rhyming words.

Teaching rhyming words at early stage of schooling, will definitely encourage and improve the children in their reading and writing skills.