Find the Rhymes is a great rhyming game that you can play with one child or a group of children. In this activity, children practice listening for and recognizing rhymes. Rhyming is important for getting ready to read because it draws children's attention to the sounds within words.

This activity is a beginning activity, for children who are just beginning to develop the skills needed to learn to read and write.

This activity is a linguistic awareness activity. Linguistic awareness refers to a child's understanding of how language works, including the understanding of how sounds come together to make words.

New resource! Download rhyming pictures to use with this activity here.

Where can I find this activity? (The links below are PDF files that will open in a new window.)

Find the Rhymes for one adult with one child, in English
Find the Rhymes for one adult with a group of children, in English
Find the Rhymes for one adult with one child, in Spanish
Find the Rhymes for one adult with a group of children, in Spanish

My child is having trouble finding the rhymes. How can I help?
If a child is having difficulty with this activity, begin with just two rhyming pairs (four pictures). At first, do the activity along with the child. It will help if you explain your thinking out loud as you find the rhyming pictures. 

For example, "Here is a picture of a cat. Let's think about the sounds in 'cat.'. Do you see a picture that sounds the same as 'cat'? Does 'house' sound the same? Cat-house. No. How about 'mat'? Cat-mat. Cat-mat. The ending sounds of cat and mat sound the same. They rhyme. We did it!"

How can I make this activity more challenging?
By adding more pictures and rhyming combinations, the child will have to compare a larger variety of words to determine if they rhyme.

Another way to make the activity more challenging is to ask the child to come up with more words that rhyme for with a pair of pictures. For example, if the child finds "cat" and "mat," ask them to think of more words that rhyme, such as "bat" and “"at."