Rhyming is one of the most important pre-reading skills that children should master before Kindergarten.
This lesson centered around rhyme gets progressively more challenging.
First we read "The Flea's Sneeze" by Lynn Downey. Children should be exposed to many rhyming stories, nursery rhymes, finger plays and songs. I chose this story on this particular day because it repeats some of the same rhymes many times. This gives some of the children who are more unsure of themselves more time to hear/understand rhyme and experience success as we move on to more challenging activities.
The purple game cards are for a game called "Toss Away". This is another way for the students to practice/hear one rhyming word family. As we pick a card from the "Oh" family (go, no, glow, doe, row, hoe, toe, snow, etc...), the children take that picture away from their board.
For some children, rhyme is a new concept, Our job is to expose them to it (many, many times in many different ways) and when they are ready, it will just "click".
The final game we played was much more challenging. There are six butterflies on the board - each with a different picture on it (rug, cake, tree, jog, etc...) Two children have butterfly nets. We flip over another picture card, and the children race to "catch" the butterfly with the matching rhyme.