Rhyming Match

Phonological awareness is the basis of reading development. It’s the ability to hear and manipulate sound structures within words and rhyming is one of these foundation skills. It comes before phonemic awareness, so if you have kids who aren’t ‘getting’ letter sounds, work on their phonological awareness instead! But remember, it should be all oral!! It’s about hearing the sounds and recognising the ones that sound the same or manipulating them to make them rhyme, aka rhyming match!

This was the reason why I created the Rhyming Match Story Stones, which will assist in building your kids phonological awareness. And I just love the set up seen here by @learninginjp and I would suggest that if you are using this in the classroom, that a similar set up during literacy groups is the perfect way to explore this.

One of my favourite ways to extend on rhyming (and the exploration of sounds) is to have the children using an iPad or recorder, record themselves saying the different words so that they can hear back the difference too. You might encourage them to at first, say all the words one at a time, and listen back and see if they can hear any similarities and then using the story stones to match up the rhyming sounds.

Another way to build on the set is by reading a book or two that has amazing rhyming words within, and creating a list of words that rhyme with those on the cards already. Some of my favourite rhyming books are Each Peach Pear Plum, Giraffes Can’t Dance, Green Eggs and Ham, Room on the Broom, The Very Cranky Bear, and Piranhas Don’t Eat Bananas. Want some other suggestions? View suggestions from My Teaching Cupboard and A Teachable Teacher.

I would love to know what’s your favourite rhyming book or ways to rhyming match? Let me know in the comments!