Rhyming is an essential skill for young children to develop as it helps them with language development, phonological awareness, and reading readiness. These are the best rhyming word worksheets for Kindergarten to help your students master this skill in no time!
Why is rhyming so important?
Rhyming is a great way to help your students develop their phonological awareness. Students carefully listen for a specific portion of a word, then look for the repetition of similar sounds in new words.
This requires them to really attend to the individual phonemes (or sounds) in words, developing and refining their phonemic awareness. Since phonemic awareness is a pivotal pre-reading skill, this practice lays the groundwork for them to become excellent decoders and, therefore, fantastic readers!
Fortunately, rhyming is a really fun way to learn these skills, and your kindergarten students will love getting lots of practice with these rhyming worksheets!
Rhyming Words Worksheets for Kindergarten
Ready to dive in? These rhyming words activities are made to help your students practise these critical skills independently. There are some regular worksheets, but many of these are also interactive games or task cards.
Since many Kindergarten students are not reading yet, some of these require them to match pictures with rhyming sounds to build this skill in a developmentally appropriate way.
However you use them, these rhyming worksheets and activities are lots of fun and will strengthen this key skill in no time!
Rhyme Printable Bundle
This bundle has 25 pages of rhyming activities, including several different ways to match and work with rhyming pictures. These are perfect for independent work time! Each printable worksheet requires your student to choose which sounds go together, so they're great for extra practice or even a little homework.
- Cut and paste rhyming pictures
- Draw a picture for a rhyming word
- Choose the rhyming word from two options
- Draw two words that rhyme
These worksheets are tailored to meet your little readers exactly where they are! They're easy to follow, hands-on, and focus heavily on pictures to make sure your students can really complete this activity independently. You just need to print them out and go!
Rhyming Clip Task Cards
With these interactive task cards, students match the rhyme from the top picture with the pictures on the bottom. This is also a great way to practice those fine motor skills too.
Build a Pizza Rhyming Game
This is such a fun alternative to a rhyme match worksheet! Each student has a pizza template, and they must fill their pizza with slices featuring words that rhyme with their game board. This game is great for independent work or for working in small groups. Plus, kids love pizza, so everyone rushes to play this game!
Odd One Out Rhyming Mats
Which sound doesn't match? These worksheets make it easy to practice identifying word families by choosing the one that doesn't quite fit right.
You might also like the individual task card versions:
Rhyme Wheels
These colourful phonic task cards can be used to consolidate an understanding of rhyme and phonological awareness skills, whilst also providing fine motor practice. Students identify the rhyming words with a clothes pin or counter.
Rhyming Task Cards - CVC and CVCC
When your students are ready for a challenge, offer them these rhyming task cards. They can even be used as a formative assessment to understand how well your students recognise those similar ending sounds.
Basically, they're given one CVC or CVCC word and are asked to come up with as many rhyming words as they can think of. This is great because the answers are open-ended; they can't just choose from multiple options and hope they got the answer right. They really have to show what they know!
This would be a great whole-class warm-up to practice literacy skills. These would be great to fill in with sound boxes because students will quickly realise that many of the letters will stay the same or recognise spelling patterns that create the same sounds.
You may also like the more advanced versions with consonant digraphs, long vowels, diphthongs and r-controlled vowel sounds.
Rhyme and Syllable Board Games
These printable rhyming games are always a hit! Your students will work with a partner, and they'll need to find simple rhyming words to move forward on the board game.
Engaging activities like this motivate young students because they don't even feel like work! Plus, this bundle includes syllable games, so you'll be able to use this one set for several key language skills.
Bonus: Rhyming Books
These 30 rhyming books for Kindergarten are a fantastic way to teach your young learners to identify rhyming pairs in different stories. This is a great auditory skill, and once your students get in the habit of looking for pairs of words that rhyme, they'll start to notice it on their own too!
When used properly, rhyming words worksheets are a fun and effective way to help kindergarten children develop their language and phonemic skills. Just remember to make the practice meaningful and use as many visual cues as needed to help students who aren't reading yet! With regular practice, your students will become adept at identifying and even making their own rhymes before you know it!