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This blog post is about Kindergarten rhyming activities to get your child ready for Kindergarten this fall.  I will also be previewing some skills that your child will be doing during his or her Kindergarten year.

Reading Skills taught in Kindergarten:

There are many skills that are focused on in preschool and in Kindergarten to help kids with reading readiness.  These skills include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Rhyming
• Phonemic awareness which is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become more aware of how the sounds in words work.
• Concepts of print-understanding how books work. These include: knowing where the front and back of the book is, knowing how a book opens and where to start reading in a book.
• Knowledge of first, middle and last sounds in a CVC (Consonant-vowel-consonant) word (i.e. cat) when presented a picture or the written word.
• Names of letters and sounds
• Being able to say all the sounds in a word such as mat as /m/ /a/ /t/
• Knowledge of basic sight words such as the, and, is

Why is rhyming important?

• Rhyming helps kids anticipate language when they are reading because they can often predict what a word will be based on what makes sense in a rhyming book.  This skill can helps kids efficiently figure out words when they are reading.
• Rhyming help kids understand how language works and can help them solve new words.  Word families such as words in the  -at family (cat, hat, bat, rat sat) are rhyming words . 
• Rhyming teaches kids the rhythm of language which can help them with their reading expression and fluency.

Here are some Kindergarten rhyming activities to help your child prepare for Kindergarten:

• Read aloud rhyming books such as Dr. Seuss books and nursery rhymes. Many read aloud books for babies, toddlers and young children rhyme. Rhyming is a skill that you can start when your child is an infant. You ca read and reread these books with rhymes. Have your child finish the rhyme, especially if your child has already heard the book a couple of times before. Here are some suggestions for rhyming books: http://www.pbs.org/parents/adventures-in-learning/2014/08/rhyming-books-kids/

• Rhyming songs for the car and kids books on cd are another way to promote rhyming. Many kid’s cd’s have nursery rhymes or songs with rhyming words. Songs are a great way to expose kids to rhyming on the go. Kids  love singing along! Amazon has lots of choices. Tim had this rhyming book and cd to play in the car when he was little: https://www.amazon.com/Sing-along-Songs-CD-Roger-Priddy/dp/0312506481/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532096923&sr=8-1&keywords=sing+along+songs+with+cd

• Rhyming games like rhyming bingo and rhyming memory are fun Kindergarten rhyming activities. Here are some links: Rhyming bingo:http://<iframe style=”width:120px;height:240px;” marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ src=”//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=learningtorea-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=B0007KLH9G&asins=B0007KLH9G&linkId=9f94eaa7599d7caa04d66268b2372229&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff”> </iframe> ” data-wplink-url-error=”true”>https://www.amazon.com/Trend-T6067-Learner-Rhyming-TEPT6067/dp/B0007KLH9G/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1493005063&sr=8-2&keywords=rhyming+games&linkCode=ll1&tag=fuada-20&linkId=117238ccfd736d98b3b70f04624625e Rhyming memory: https://www.amazon.com/Trend-Enterprises-Inc-T-23026-Rhyming/dp/B000NNFYWS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531923172&sr=8-1&keywords=rhyming+picture+cards
  
• In Kindergarten, kids will need to identify rhymes and produce rhymes. You can practice this skill orally with your child. Name three things and have your child select the two that rhyme. Try gathering some household items to do this activity with objects.  Have your child think of something else that rhymes with the rhyming objects that you collected. For example, if collected a mat and hat, help your child think of something else that rhymes with mat and hat. Your child’s rhyme can even be a make believe word.

Have fun rhyming with your child! What other Kindergarten rhyming activities have you done at home? Do you have any rhyming books that you like? Please leave a comment below!