Struggling to find rhyming activities that your kids will love? Check out this fun find a rhyming word game for preschool and kindergarten students. This rhyming mystery is easy to prep, and an activity students can complete within a short amount of time. Click here to download this find the rhyming word center and activity.

Phonemic Awareness and Rhyming Activities

Phonemic awareness is an essential skill for kids to learn. First of all, phonemic awareness is the first building block when it comes to reading and helps improve children’s phonics abilities. For example, kids can see a phonics pattern when rhyming words and practicing specific spelling techniques. In addition, if a child knows how to use the word rat but is unsure of the printed word cat, students can recognize that the term cat ends the same way as the word they already know how to spell.

There are many phonemic awareness rhyming activities you can do at home too. When we first introduced this topic to our toddler, I just said a list of rhyming words based on our environment. If I saw a cat, I would list five other things that rhymed with cat. Of course, my toddler would join in and rhyme too. In addition, you can take turns with your child as they grow, rhyming with different words. Since we play these games, my child often rhymes on her own now when she can. We are building those phonemic awareness blocks so that when she is older with phonics and spelling words, she can understand spelling patterns.

Find the Rhyming Word Printable Game

Since we often rhyme in our household, I made this fun find the rhyming word game that is easy to prep. In this printable rhyming, game, kids will also solve a mystery of who ate the cupcakes. This find a rhyming word  activity and escape room is designed for a literacy center for small groups of students to complete. It includes 12 rhyming task cards, secret clues, a prompt to read before center time, a fast finisher tracing worksheet, and a cupcake decorating activity. This fun find the rhyming word printable game is great for a filler activity, literacy center, and homeschool activity too. You can even prep this several times for your entire class to do it at once. However, I am all about less prep work, so just prepping this one time and leaving it for a center is the best for me. Grab it here.

How to Set up this Find a Rhyming Word Game

1. Print out a student record page for each student, all of the task card pages, which are black and white, and the early finisher tracing page and decorating page.
2. Next, cut out the task cards; there are a total of 12 different task cards, and cut out the clues too.
3. Then, follow the step-by-step directions to see what clues and task cards to place inside each envelope. If you are doing this at home for homeschool, I hide one set of clues in one room and another in a different room. This way, they have multiple areas to search in. But you do not have to do it this way either!
4. Read the prompt to your students before you begin so they know their mission is to figure out who ate the cupcakes by rhyming words. Also, if you are doing this at school, make sure to explain to your students that they will need to put each rhyming clue and task card back in the envelope before going to the next envelope. This way, you do not have to prep anything, and it is set up for the next group.
5. Let your students rotate through literacy centers as usual and play this fun find the rhyming word game with a mysterious twist!

On each task card, students will get an image of an object, and then on their paper, they will color in the rhyming word they find that matches. Each task card has a number on it that aligns with the rhyming word boxes on the rhyming worksheet. Once students identify the correct rhyming word from the task card and their paper, they will color it in, which makes this fun for preschool kids, too, because there isn’t a lot of writing. However, when students come across a cupcake with a word on it from different envelopes, they will need to write it down on the cupcake on their paper. These words are simple high-frequency words and ones that kids can use phonics skills with to sound out each word to solve the mystery. The answer is the pig. Finally, if there is extra time after completing these 12 find the rhyming word task cards, kids can achieve the extra finisher activity. On this paper kids will trace a sentence of the mystery answer and decorate their own cupcake. For the cupcake decorating kids can use any coloring utensils but also you can add some glue, gems, and sparkles for them to decorate their cupcake with too. This is a great way to add in some fine motor practice with this center activity too.

Whether you are teaching preschool and kindergarten at home or you are a classroom teacher your kids will love this fun find a rhyming word escape room that has a mystery with it! By using this game you are taking boring task cards and giving students a goal and puzzle to solve, and who does not love a puzzle? Escape rooms and learning games are a great way for students to work together and complete a common goal. In addition escape rooms are great way to make learning more interactive and engaging. We offer several different escape rooms that are low prep and ones that are big for the entire class to solve. To view all of our fun escape rooms find them here.