🎵 Rhyme Time

How to play Rhyme Time, the long way

Pick a word with lots of rhymes to start. Short words that end in a sound like -at, -ee, -un, -ake or -ing are easy, and the deck on this page is full of them. Tap New word, and Peabody says it so everyone hears the same thing.

Go round the car in the same order every time, so the quiet player still gets a turn. Each player says one rhyming word. Made-up words can count if the car agrees: a four-year-old's "zat" is a real rhyme, and it is how children hear that words are built from sounds.

A player who is stuck says "pass", and the turn moves on. Nobody is out. When every player has passed in a row, the round is over, and the last player who found a rhyme picks the next starting word. Keep a count of how many rhymes the whole car found, and try to beat it.

By age

🧸 3–5: Rhyming is one of the first word games a three- or four-year-old can play. Start with cat, bee and sun, say the word slowly, and let a grown-up whisper a rhyme if they need one. Nonsense rhymes count.

🎒 6–9: Six to nine: real words only, and no repeats. Try a harder word like light or train, or play that each rhyme has to be an animal or a food when it can.

🎧 10+: Big kids can rhyme two-syllable words (rocket, pocket) or make a rhyming couplet about the trip, one line each: "We drove all day along the shore, / and then the baby started to snore."

When it goes wrong

• Someone says a word that sounds close but doesn't rhyme (cat, cap): say both slowly and listen to the end together. Then let them try again.
• One player knows lots of rhymes and the others go quiet: give the youngest the first turn after each new word, while the easy rhymes are still there.
• The car keeps rhyming the same three words: tap for a new starting word from the deck, or let someone pick the next one.

Questions families ask

All 25 cards in the deck