Action Rhyming

by Brandy
( New Hampshire, USA)

This is a fun game to play at home with the kids when they are bored. It helps them learn their rhyming words in an entertaining way.

I like to split the kids into teams when there are four or more of them playing. We have played it at birthday parties and given prizes to the winners, and of course condolence prizes to the losing team.

When I was younger my parents always tried to throw me a great birthday party on a budget. this was one of the games we came up with because it is free and lasts longer than pin the tail on the donkey. It is best suited for 5-10 year olds.

Resources needed: Kids who want to have fun and adults to supervise and aid in game play. The game normally takes around 30 minutes to play. Time varies depending on age and skill level of participants.

How to play: Split the children into teams. If the teams are not even that is okay. Flip a coin to see which team starts.

The first player stands in front of their team and acts out a simple word like run. Their team guesses the word. They get one point for guessing correctly. If they guessed it correctly the other team has to act out a word that rhymes with run, like sun.

This continues until a team messes up. A team can mess up by acting out a non rhyming word or not guessing a word correctly. When a team messes up, the next team gets to pick the new word without worrying about it rhyming.

Normally the adults decide when to end the game based on the kids interest and fun level, however a point limit can be set. 10 points is the recommended point limit.

For younger children the adults can pick the starting words. Good starting words for younger children are simple ones like: sun, pot, cat, dog, ect.

We ban certain words at the beginning of the game. The two we do not allow are orange and purple.

For older children setting s time limit on the guessing is good. We do 2 minutes if all the children are over the age of 7.

Animal words work well for the game and make the acting out super fun.

At my sons sixth birthday party we did "things that go" as a theme. The kids had to act out words like train, plane, ect. this is a tough theme unless the kids are older and creative. We had a blast with it though.

When one of the kids did "train" they went around the house and collected all the adults and before we knew it there we six of us all making choo choo noises with him.

The kids guessed it right away but we kept our train going and soon all the kids were part of it.