Picture Rhyming Bingo for Preschool and Kindergarten Children
Easy and quick, this picture rhyming bingo will have your little one learning the sound patterns of rhyming words and building important pre-reading skills while having fun!
A learning activity every tyke will like, can be found in the rows below.
Ox & Owl Literacy
Be sure to show them how it’s done, by keeping it super light and fun.
Rhyming’s a blast, so they’ll learn fast!
Games are a sure win with kiddos and it’s the perfect way to get them excited about learning. To help your child or student practice learning rhyming patterns, you can download and print out our free picture rhyming bingo printable.
We’ve designed this bingo game with preschool and kindergarten children in mind. It’s great for young children to focus on oral language games at this age.
Listening, practicing, and playing with language sounds help to build strong listening skills, such as phonological awareness and listening comprehension. These skills are important for future reading and writing.
If you’re an educator or parent looking for early literacy activities, this bingo freebie will make practicing matching rhyming words a blast!
OOLiteracy Insight Hub
Welcome to OOLiteracy Insight Hub! In this special corner, we illuminate three key reasons why you will want to embark on this literacy adventure with your child and/or student.
This activity encourages your
little learner(s) to be a…
Word
Wizard
Word Wizards Build Enchantment
through Vocabulary Elevation
Children explore new words and build their vocabulary as they work with picture cards.
Rhyming is perfect for practicing pronouncing vocabulary because to determine if words rhyme, children may need to hear and say the word multiple times.
Repeatedly engaging with a word in their mind, and comparing it with other words, also enhances children’s ability to remember and retain the vocabulary.
Sound
Explorer
Sound Explorers Hone Their Listening &
Language Superpowers
Exposure to rhyme encourages children to hear the differences and similarities of sounds within words.
Our picture rhyming bingo gets children actively engaged in both identifying and matching up rhyming words.
Through applying their knowledge and discovering if they were right or wrong, children build a more robust concept of rhyme and further hone their listening skills.
Tale
Trailblazer
Tale Trailblazers Navigate Narrative Skills & Craft Imaginative Journeys
Picture cards are a great entry into practicing storytelling. These rhyming bingo calling cards can be turned into a fun shared story creation activity, where two or more storytellers take turns to add to a single story by adding a new picture card to the mix!
These early narrative experiences invite your child to express their creative energy and provide significant language enrichment.
Click to be taken to the full instructions for this extension activity.
How Does Picture Rhyming Bingo Work?
Rhyming Bingo is an excellent choice for helping preschoolers practice identifying rhyming words and learning how to match rhyming words together. As children match rhyming words on their bingo cards, they actively build their phonological awareness skills.
Our version of bingo is modified to three squares tall and three squares across. Children win when they get three squares in a row. They can make a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal row.
It is recommended to go through each of the pictures on your child or student’s bingo board to make sure he/she knows what each one is before playing.
Build flexible thinkers by tweaking or changing the rules to games kids know well. It can be tricky and some may resist, but soon they will see that new challenges can be exciting, adding whole new elements of fun!
Tackling the Tricky Side of Rhyming Bingo
Rhyming bingo can be a tad tricky for young children, especially those who are just in the beginning stages of learning the concept of rhyme. It is recommended to introduce rhyming bingo either one-on-one or in small groups to start. Little ones will need some coaching and some may need lots of hand-holding to navigate playing rhyming bingo at first.
In regular bingo, players find exact matches to what is being called out or held up. However, in rhyming bingo, children need to find a picture of something that rhymes with the word being called out or held up. This can sometimes be a bit confusing for children and they may start searching their bingo board for the same picture being held up, as you would in a typical bingo game. They will need reminders that they need to be searching for rhyming words and not matching pictures. You may want to supply a few rhyming words to help steer them in the right direction.
Not only can rhyming be tricky in and of itself, but tweaking a game that children may know well by changing the rules or playing it slightly differently, is an additional challenge. But it’s excellent practice for building flexible thinkers!
Rhyme Time Remix: Rhyming Fun Beyond Bingo
Guess what’s even more fun about our Rhyming Bingo game?
Our free bingo game has 4 different bingo cards and 30 calling cards. To keep the magic of rhyme going, you can go beyond playing bingo and mix things up by using them for other interactive rhyme activities. We have a few ideas below for you and your little learners to try.
Do They Rhyme?
Use the bingo calling cards to play a simple game of Do They Rhyme?
Simply select two bingo calling cards and encourage players to express their judgment – a thumbs-up for a rhyme, or a thumbs-down for a non-rhyme.
You can also change up the actions and bring in more movement!
For example, if the words rhyme, they can do a spin. If they don’t rhyme, they
need to touch their head and nose at the same time.
Rhyme Scavenger Hunt
A Perfect Rainy Day Activity
Simply hide some of the bingo calling cards in one or two rooms in the house and have your little one go on a search to find them.
Each time a card is found, work together to think of one or two rhyming words for the card that was found.
For example, if your little one finds the picture card for the word “dig”, then a couple of rhyming words could be “pig” or “wig”.
Rhyme Time – Partner In Crime
Can your little learner(s) pair the rhyme teams together?
Select some rhyming partners from the bunch of rhyme picture calling cards. Scatter the cards around, and tell your little acorn that their challenge is to pair them up with their rhyming partner.
Rhyme Wizardry
Bestow your little rhyme wizard with a wand. If you want to be extra fancy, they can wear a cloak and wizard hat too!
Scatter the picture rhyming word calling cards. Next, let your little wizard know that rhyme magic is needed to sort these words into groups where the words in each group rhyme with each other.
This is a perfect activity to pair with the rhyme scavenger hunt!
A Rhyme Conundrum for a Rhyme Detective
This is a rhyme oddity-detecting activity.
Simply lay out four rhyme picture calling cards in front of your little detective. Three of these cards should rhyme with each other. One of the cards should not rhyme with the rest.
Can your little detective deduce which word is the odd one out?
Vocabulary Quest
Word: Snuggle
Meaning: to get cozy with someone or something you love, like giving a big, warm hug or cuddling up with a soft blanket or stuffed animal.
Ex: All the penguins waddled into a group huddle, declaring it a “snuggle shuffle” to stay warm on the ice.
Curious Queries Corner?
Stir up your learner’s imagination and create some conversation and connection by asking an unusual question.
Would you rather have spaghetti hair you can eat anytime or rainbow fingers that change colors when you wiggle them?
How to Play Rhyming Bingo
Engage your little learner in actively listening for sounds within words to identify rhyming pairs. It’s a playful way to engage in rhyme exploration and strengthen their foundational language skills.
Materials You Will Need:
- Free picture rhyming bingo printable (available for download)
- Card stock or paper
- Laminator or clear plastic page protectors and card protectors (optional)
- Scissors or paper cutter
- Small manipulatives or tokens to place over the pictures on the bingo board as rhymes are made
Instructions:
STEP 1: Have your child place a picture bingo card in front of them. Together, go through the names of each noun on the card to ensure he/she knows what each one is.
STEP 2: Next, hand out manipulatives or tokens for children to use to cover rhyming pictures as they play.
STEP 3: Shuffle the bingo calling cards and place them in a container. Pull out one calling card at a time and have your child place a manipulative or token on any pictures on their bingo board that rhymes with the picture you’re holding.
STEP 4: Help your early rhymer by going through each of the pictures on their picture board and directly comparing it to the name of the noun on the calling card you selected. Do they rhyme?
For each one that is a rhyme, have your child cover the picture with a token until he/she gets a row of three pictures. They can make a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal row.
GAME COMPLETE: If your child gets three in a row, they must call out bingo and confirm that the words they covered do in fact rhyme with the words you called out or held up.
NOTE: For single players, take out the calling cards that match the pictures on your selected child’s bingo card. If playing with multiple players, let players know if you call the same picture on their bingo boards, they cannot cover it with a token. It is not a rhyming match, it is an exact match because it is the same word.
We hope you and your little rhymer(s) enjoy this picture-rhyming bingo game. Please share any activities and content you love from our website with others and on social media, we only ask that you send others directly to our website so they can browse and download activities directly.
Storyteller’s Corner
Storytelling Extension Activity
Story Picture Card Creation
Using Picture Rhyming Cards
Once upon a time, there was a king who needed to save his kingdom. One day he went out to the fields where he met a goat. The goat told the king a big secret. The goat shared with the king that there was a powerful ring that could help the king protect the kingdom from ruin. The king sent his knight out in search of the ring. The knight searched far and wide. He was tired and longed to be back at the castle, but did not give up. At last, he came across the ring and presented it to the king. With this ring, the king saved his kingdom.
Unleash your Imagination!
Extend our Picture Rhyming Word Calling Cards into an activity that captivates young learners in the art of storytelling.
How to Play:
It can be exciting to use the same cards again and explore different combinations of cards to see how the story takes unexpected and imaginative turns each time depending on the way the cards get shuffled.
This shared storytelling experience not only strengthens the parent-child bond but also enhances language development and imaginative thinking.
Nurturing Little Minds, Sparking Big Dreams
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I’m happy you’re here!
Hi, I’m Julie, the passionate creator of Ox & Owl Literacy. I enjoy empowering families and educators with wonderful resources to inspire fun, imaginative, and joyful learning opportunities for young kiddos. You’ll find lots of recommended books, reading resources, and creative learning activities on this site aiming to help children fall in love with language, books, reading, and the transformational power of stories.
