Printable Turkey Rhyming Game (Preschool and Kindergarten Thanksgiving Phonics)

This turkey has lost his tail feathers, and the only way to get them back is to find the ones that rhyme!

There are 36 feathers in this game, making 18 rhyming pairs. Your little learners pick a feather, say the word out loud, then hunt through the pile for its rhyming partner before popping both onto the turkey’s tail.

If your kiddos loved our rhyming potions matching game for Halloween, this is a lovely way to keep those rhyming ears busy right through to Thanksgiving.

There are also some blank feathers in the set, so once the rhyming pairs are done, you or your kiddos can draw, write or stick on their own pictures and invent some brand new rhymes.

What Skills Can Your Little Ones Learn?

For a simple game, there’s actually quite a lot of skills that can be learnt and practiced!

With this turkey rhyme matching game your little ones can develop:

• Phonological awareness – hearing that words are made of smaller sound units.
• Rhyme recognition and onset-rime awareness – the specific skill of isolating the rime (the vowel and following sounds in a syllable) and noticing when two words share it.
• Auditory discrimination – telling similar sounds apart. Sock and clock rhyme, but sock and stick do not and hearing that difference is a skill.
• Visual discrimination – scanning all the feathers to locate a specific picture builds the same careful looking skill that reading will need.
• Vocabulary – some of the pictures may be new words for younger children.
• Fine motor skills – picking up, placing and stacking the feathers gives hands plenty of practice, especially if you add tongs or tweezers into the mix ooooohhhh.
• Concentration and working memory – holding one word in mind while searching for its partner.
• Speaking and listening – played in pairs or a small group, this turns into a lovely turn-taking activity with lots of talk.

Who’d have thought such a simple game can help your children develop so many skills – that’s the power of play!

How To Prepare This Thanksgiving Rhyming Game

First you’re going to want to download the rhyme matching game by clicking on the download box at the bottom of the page.

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Then, print it out on to paper or card.

Next, cut the pieces out and you’re pretty much good to go.

There’s 18 pairs of matching cards and a turkey base to place them onto. I gave the turkey page a border so you can just leave it as it is – or cut it out if you have a bit more time.

I’d advise laminating them after as it will keep them nice if want to use them again.

I also made some blanks if you or your children wanted to create their own rhymes.

Now you’re all set and ready to play!

Get Even More Out of This Turkey Rhyming Game

If you laminate these, they’ll last you years, so here are some other ways to get more out of them.

Gobble If It Rhymes

Hold up two feathers and say both words. If they rhyme, everyone gobbles and flaps their wings! If they don’t, everyone freezes as still as a turkey trying not to be spotted. Mix in plenty of non-rhyming pairs to keep them on their toes. A lovely little brain break!

Keep the Rhyme Going

Pull one feather from the pile and see how many rhyming words your group can add to it before someone gets stuck. Jam, ham, clam, lamb… 

Make Your Own Feathers

Hand over the blank feathers and let your little learners make up their own rhyming pairs. They could draw the pictures, write the words, or cut pictures out of an old magazine or catalog and stick them on. Laminate the best ones and add them to the game so it grows over time. If they get really into designing feathers, our design your own feather template gives them one big feather to go wild on.

A Rhyming Turkey of Their Own

If your little ones have made our build a Thanksgiving turkey craft, challenge them to draw a rhyming pair to stick on.

Read the Rhymes

A few of the pairs, like pan and can or ham and jam, are CVC words, which makes them perfect for kindergarteners who are starting to blend. Write the words on sticky notes and see if they can read each one before matching it to its feather.

From Feathers to Paper

When the matching is going well, pop some of the rhyming pairs into our word match worksheet maker and print a draw-a-line version. It’s a handy way to see who can match the rhymes independently, and it doubles as some pencil control practice.

However you use this turkey rhyming game, I hope you and your little ones have a good time with it! And you can find more Thanksgiving printables here.

Enjoy and let’s nurture those neurons!