Rhyme Out is an activity that you can do with one child or a group of children to help them learn to listen for and generate rhymes.

This activity is a making progress activity, for children who have mastered some of 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 rhyming.

New resource! Download a list of rhyming words 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.)

Rhyme Out for one adult with one child, in English
Rhyme Out for one adult with a group of children, in English
Rhyme Out for one adult with one child, in Spanish
Rhyme Out for one adult with a group of children, in Spanish

My child is having trouble with this activity.  What can I do?
Children learn to recognize rhymes before they learn to generate rhymes.  So, if a child is having difficulty with this activity, first, remind the child that words rhyme when they sound the same at the end.  Then begin by saying pairs of words that rhyme and asking your child if they rhyme or not.   Let your child hear as many rhyming pairs as possible, and emphasize the rhyming endings of the words as you say each pair.  When the child seems comfortable noticing when words rhyme, say a pair of words that do not rhyme.  Again, emphasize the endings of the words that do not rhyme to make sure that the child hears the difference.

Once your child can recognize rhymes, say one word, and ask your child to think of a word that rhymes.  If your child can do this with one word, try proceeding with the activity as it is written.
 
How can I make this activity more challenging?
To make this activity more challenging, use words with more than one syllable to start off the rhyming.  (Some examples of multi-syllable words that are good for rhyming are: flower, away, enough.)