10 Fun & Easy Rhyming Games for Preschoolers

Rhyming games are one of the best ways to help your young children learn to recognize and practice producing rhyming words. They’ll love coming up with new rhymes, and you’ll enjoy seeing their imagination spark as they play games with you! Let’s take a look at some fun rhyming games for preschoolers that will help develop phonological awareness.

Why Is Learning to Rhyme Important?

Phonological awareness is the ability to notice and/or manipulate the sounds in our speech. This awareness is an important component of early literacy skills and part of learning to read. Rhyming is a component of phonological awareness where we understand that words can be broken into onset and rime (a beginning sound and an ending). For example, the word cat and hat have different onsets (beginning phonemes), but have the same rime (sounds at the end of the words).

Why Should You Use Rhyming Games for preschoolers?

The more you practice recognizing and making rhyming words with your little learners, the easier it will be for them to learn rhyme recognition and rhyme production. The good news is that rhyming activities can be silly, playful, and just plain fun. Rhyming games are fun literacy activities that provide a fun and hands-on way to work on rhyming skills.

It’s rhyme time! Here are some of my favorite simple rhyming games and hands-on activities you can try out with your preschool and kindergarten students or kids at home.

Rhyming Lotto or Bingo Game

Rhyming lotto or bingo is a game of chance where players mark the matching word rhymes on their bingo cards. To play, the adult calls out words one at a time. Each time children hear a word and have a correct rhyme on their card, they cover the rhyming word with a marker or small manipulatives.

The first kiddo to cover their entire card is the winner! It’s fun, interactive, and great for reinforcing knowledge of rhyme. Wanna work on fine motor skills too? Provide tongs or tweezers and have your kids use them to place the manipulatives.

Rhyming Challenge

To play the rhyme challenge game, gather a small group of students or have your whole class join in. Start by rolling the ball to one student and saying a word. That student then has to say a word that rhymes with your word and then rolls the ball to another child.

Rhyming Dust Bunnies Game

If you love the dust bunny picture books, you’ll surely love this game. Playing the rhyming dust bunnies game is an easy and fun way to help kids build phonological awareness. This game is great for independent practice, small groups, and you can even use it for a fun circle time activity with your whole class.

To play, spread out a set of carrot on a table. Read the cards to determine what the bunny wants to eat. Then kids can find the matching carrot card and stick it in the bunny’s mouth.

a Rhyme Scavenger Hunt Game

You can send kids on a scavenger hunt around your classroom, playground, or at home. Present a few words or objects to your kids and then send them out to find objects that rhyme with those objects or words.

Give them a the word sock and they can find a rock. Give them a star and they can find a toy car. Give them a coat and they can find a boat. If they struggle, you can tell them that they are getting warm or hot when they get closer to the object that rhymes

Rhyming Matching Activities

Playing a rhyming matching activity is a great way to help students learn how to recognize words that rhyme. First, you’ll need to gather some pictures or objects that rhyme. Once you have cards, you can use them for many different games.

Simple Matching Activity – Mix up the cards and place them all face-up on a table or in a pocket chart. Kids can take turns finding a pair of cards that rhyme.

Rhyming Memory Match Game – Shuffle the cards and turn them face-down in a grid. Kids can take turns turning over two cards to see if they rhyme. The child with the most pairs of cards that rhyme is the winner.

Rhyme Matching Game – Here is another fun version of a matching game. Start by giving each child three cards. They should place them face-up in a row in front of them. The remaining cards go in a pile in the center of the table

The first player takes the top card, flips it over, reads the simple word pictured on the card, and checks to see if it rhymes with any of their cards.

If the flipped card rhymes, they should pick up the card, match it with their card, set the matching rhymes pair aside, and the next player takes a turn. If the flipped card does not rhyme with any of their cards, the next player gets a turn.

The next player can pick up the card from the discard pile or turn over a new card from the draw pile. Play continues until one of the kids creates matches with all of their cards.

I Spy a Rhyme

This is an engaging word game. To play this rhyme version of I Spy, you’ll need to pick an object that everyone can see. Start by giving a clue about what rhymes with the object, like “I spy something that rhymes with ‘cat’.” Then, give the first sound of the object. “It starts with a /b/ sound” The other players must guess the object by listening to your clues. If they guess correctly, they get to pick the next object!

You and your kids will have so much fun with this one! I love that this game uses real objects.

Down By The Bay Game

Use these free Down by the Bay rhyming picture cards with the song, or you can use the rhyming pictures to create games like a rhyming word match game. You can get really silly with this game and encourage young learners to come up with their own rhymes.

Rhyme Go Fish Game

Young kids love playing a good old game of Go Fish. Use rhyme cards to play a rhyming version of the classic game…. a perfect addition to your learning centers to give kids extra practice with rhyming skills.

Monster Rhyming Game

This fun Monster Game is great for Halloween and all year long. Read the rhyming card to determine what the monster wants to eat, and your kids can find the piece of candy with the correct word on it. Be sure to tell them to be careful when they put the candy in the monster’s mouth…..they don’t want to get bit. MUNCH!

Additional Rhyming Games

Are you looking for more rhyming games for preschoolers? Here are a few more fun activities to try with your kids.

Fishing for Rhyming Words by This Reading Mama

Simple Rhyming Game by The Measured Mom

Roll a Rhyme by This Reading Mama

Rhyming Games and Activities in the Store

Are you ready to get started with some great activities with your kids? Check out these fun printable rhyming activities and rhyming games for preschoolers in the store to boost rhyming and phonological awareness skills. Click on the images to purchase them today.

Purchase on TPT

Do you prefer to shop at Teachers Pay Teachers? You can also purchase the rhyming games and activities in my TPT Store.

Additional Rhyming Activities for Kids

Looking for additional rhyming activities for your kids? Check out these blog posts for more great ideas.