- index cards
- marker
- match
- rhyme
MA Standards:
Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.2.c: Identify the initial sound of a spoken word and, with guidance and support, generate several other words that have the same initial sound
Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.2.a: With guidance and support, recognize and produce rhyming words (e.g., identify words that rhyme with /cat/ such as /bat/ and /sat/).
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Literacy Knowledge/Phonological Awareness: Identifies and discriminates between sounds and phonemes in language, such as attention to beginning and ending sounds of words and recognition that different words begin or end with the same sound.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 8: Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.
Rhyme Time
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
Skill Focus: Matching and Sorting, Phonological Awareness (Rhyme), Vocabulary
Educator Prep: Write rhyming words on index cards (one word per card) using words children are familiar with. Each card should have a matching illustration for visual identification.
Play a rhyming match game with the children. Pass out three cards to each child. Have children put them face down in a pile. Have one child turn over the first card in his or her pile. Tell the other children to look at their cards, one by one, and see if they can find a card that matches in rhyme. Have children name the card as they turn it over, and identify the first letter and letter sound of the word on the card. Place the matches face up, in the center of the table. Recite all the rhymes once all the matches have been made. You may want to continue passing out more cards once matches have all been made.
Adaptation: For centers with few children, lay the cards out on the table and have children match the pairs of cards that rhyme.
Adaptation: For centers with very young children you may want to place three cards on the table, two of them with words that rhyme. Say each word with children and have them choose the two cards that rhyme.
Adaptation: For children with strong rhyming skills, place the rhyming cards on the table face down in a grid formation. Have a child turn over two cards at a time. If they match, remove the cards from the grid. If not, turn them back down. This requires children to use their memory skills as they keep searching for rhyming pairs.