Halloween Rhyming Words

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Teaching children rhyming words is important because it helps them learn different words, their sounds, and language formation, which is an important skill to develop emergent literacy and learn how to read later on.

Rhyming also teaches children how to group words with similar sounds, which will help them not only develop phonological awareness when they develop the ability to identify and work with different sounds but also phonemic awareness skills to be able to separate words into smaller units of sounds, which will be necessary later on to develop their writing and reading skills.

One of the best ways to teach children rhyming words is by using games and hands-on activities. This free activity focuses use pictures that can be combined with spoken words, but also include printed words for children that are in a more advanced stage, and also to be used in other literacy activities.

You can grab the FREE printable below.

Halloween Rhyming Words Activity

Since Halloween is fast approaching, I’ve created a FREE rhyming activity to use with your preschoolers at home or in the classroom. It is very simple and fun to use and requires very little preparation. It also comes in two parts to give you flexibility on how to use it.

The first part includes two pages with four rhyming cards each, for a total of 8 rhyming cards with pictures only. These cards include the main words witch, ghost, hat, cauldron, bat, broom, cat, and spider.

The second part of the activity includes almost four pages with a total of 14 rhyming cards that include pictures and printed words. The words included on these cards are witch, ghost, hat, cauldron, beach, toast, apron, rat, bat, broom, cat, spider, costume, and drier.

I will suggest printing multiple copies of these words and cutting them one to separate them. That way preschoolers can use them to match the rhyming words, copy the words, match the words with magnetic, foam, and wooden letters, and even use them to find other words that match these ones.

Benefits of This Activity

The benefits that this rhyming activity will bring to your preschoolers are several. Some of the most important skills that your children are going to be practicing on are:

Word rhyming sounds recognition and/or identification.
Labeling the pictures to match the ones that rhyme.
Ability to distinguish between similar and different sounds.
One-to-one correspondence.
Fine motor skills.
Pre-writing skills.

How to Prepare the Activity

This activity is very easy to prepare. You just have to print each page using white cardstock. If you want to use them multiple times, place them on a sheet protector or laminate them, and have the children use dry-erase markers.

Give each child one or both sheet(s) of rhyming words and a pencil, crayon, or marker if you don’t want to reuse it or the children are going to take the sheet home, or a dry-erase marker if you protected them and wish to reuse them.

When to Use These Rhyming Words

It is a good practice to introduce the activity first to introduce or review the rhyming words, especially if your children have not been exposed to this type of activity before. Once you are finished with this process, you can use the cards in many ways such as:

Small group activity.
Literacy center option.
Take home game.
Quiet area option.
Writing Center option.

Extension Activities:

I love to create printables that you can use in multiple ways. It is very convenient and gives your preschoolers different choices, and promotes their interest, which will help develop the learning process and work on different skills.

To extend the activity there are several things you can do. I’m sure you can come up with more ideas, but I wanted to give you some to get you started. These are:

Have the children find other words that rhyme with the ones provided.
Provide copies of the pages and have your preschoolers cut out the matching words and glue them on a piece of construction or regular paper to create a rhyming book.
Provide the written word cards and have the children trace or copy the words.
Match each word with magnetic, wooden, or foam letters.
Draw the pictures.

Using Rhyming Books and Songs

You know me… I always recommend the use of books every day, regardless of your theme. In addition, if you combine books and songs, it is even better because you are addressing multiple domains at the same time. These are some of the rhyming books that I like:

Jack Hartmann is famous for creating songs that are perfect for preschoolers, and you can find them on CDs and videos. These are some of his rhyming videos that you can use for a fun and learning time with your preschoolers:

Pin It for Later

If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it for later, pin it to your Literacy and Halloween Pinterest boards, so you can have it available when you need it.

I hope that you and your students enjoy this Halloween Rhyming Words printable, and help learn or review their language and phonological and phonemic awareness abilities!

Don’t forget to grab your FREE printable, by clicking on the link below.

Are you looking for more Halloween ideas and activities, similar to do at home or in the classroom? If so, check out some more of our favorites below or all our ideas on our site’s Holidays page.

Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.

Love,

P.D. Please let me know if these rhyming word cards worked for you, or if you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful. Also, if you came up with different ideas and want to share them, I will love to post them as well.